From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Licence of ts-comint Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 12:12:15 -0400 Message-ID: References: <1502621936.3273210.1071832168.58C017A8@webmail.messagingengine.com> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1503418365 15735 195.159.176.226 (22 Aug 2017 16:12:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 16:12:45 +0000 (UTC) Cc: jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com, jostein@kjonigsen.net, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: John Wiegley Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Aug 22 18:12:39 2017 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1dkBnA-0003bc-1b for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 22 Aug 2017 18:12:36 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:58292 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dkBnG-0005a2-Jp for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 22 Aug 2017 12:12:42 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:45671) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dkBn1-0005WN-72 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 22 Aug 2017 12:12:28 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dkBn0-0006RA-90 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 22 Aug 2017 12:12:27 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:33079) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dkBmp-0006Km-Es; Tue, 22 Aug 2017 12:12:15 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1dkBmp-0007z4-0y; Tue, 22 Aug 2017 12:12:15 -0400 In-reply-to: (message from John Wiegley on Mon, 21 Aug 2017 13:21:41 -0700) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:217685 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > Not necessarily. nVidia has enough money they could write their own backends > from scratch, The GPL does not allow linking GCC front ends with nonfree backends. They would have had to write an entire compiler. which would mean users losing out on all the research that's > gone into LLVM, any chance of compatibility with standard tools, etc. These are side issues when our freedom is at stake. > No company with sufficient resources is forced to participate in free > software, nVidia could, in principle, have written a compiler from scratch. In practice, that is a big job and success is not guaranteed. nVidia's compiler might not have worked as well. It might not have worked well at all. It might have been too expensive to finish. nVidia might have given up, at the outset or after a couple of years of work. The GPL has induced many basically uncooperative companies and organizations to contribute their code to the free world so that they could use GPL-covered code. They are pretty strongly pressured, and that's usualy good enough. If only the developers of LLVM had not given nVidia a way to bypass our pressure, I think we would have a free compiler for a known instruction set. > Without free software, we would simply > descend into further fragmentation, lack of interoperability, and no chance at > all to benefit from the work of others. When that work is nonfree software, the invitation to use it is hardly a benefit. It's a trap. Of course, there are various sorts of secondary benefits and secondary problems. Everything that happens causes secondary benefits and secondary problems. Those are side issues. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.