On Monday, 28 October 2013 at 18:34:11 UTC, Joseph Rushton
Wakeling wrote:
On 28/10/13 18:33, Joakim wrote:
Do you have any evidence that they've exerted "proprietary
control" over llvm,
say by adding closed modules to their compiler?
I understand how you could interpret it that way, but my email
didn't actually suggest that Apple had any plans to
close-source the compiler.
No, I got it, I knew you said they'd be "able to exert
proprietary control," not that they'd done it. I was just
wondering if you had evidence that they actually had done any of
that already, since I don't follow llvm closely.
It is a valid concern, as Google has been closing up a bunch of
their initially Apache-licensed Android apps:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/
But the source is still out there for the older versions, and
these companies don't have any responsibility to keep giving
their work away for free.
My impression -- and I'm happy to be proven wrong -- is that
Apple disliked the idea of a GPLv3-licensed compiler because
its patent grants might have created problems for other parts
of their software portfolio, which indeed _are_ proprietary.
Yeah, the GPLv3 is why Apple and FreeBSD stopped updating to the
latest gcc after 4.2.1, which was the last GPLv2 release. OS X
10.8 and iOS 6 were completely built by clang and FreeBSD 10, the
next major release, is making clang the default compiler. I
don't know if it's because of patent grants or other aspects of
GPLv3.
While I do not buy Apple products because of their odious
patent stance, I
highly doubt they would ever use such compiler patents, if
they even have any.
Microsoft has a patent on continually scanning a document for
spelling errors
and highlighting them
(http://www.google.com/patents/US5787451), yet _as far as
we know_ (and according to a former Microsoft employee -
http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?page_id=1548), they've never
asserted it on the
dozens of applications with such spell-checking in their text
editing controls,
including this Chrome browser tab I'm currently typing into.
I think we've all seen enough software history to know that
"highly unlikely" is not the same as "won't happen". :-)
Valid point.
I agree that it is a problem that Apple doesn't do a patent
grant for their open
source projects, assuming they even have any compiler or other
software patents
on them, but I'm skeptical they'd ever enforce those anyway.
Also, IANAL, but I
believe they'd never be able to extract any money from such a
lawsuit anyway,
since they don't make any money from clang or Safari and give
them away for free.
I doubt they'd try to use their patents to extract money from
anyone, but I could see them using them to put a competitor out
of business. If (say) Firefox OS or Ubuntu Touch become
significant forces in the mobile/tablet market, I wouldn't put
it past any of the traditional mobile players to pull out their
patent portfolios to try and damage them.
How do they put them out of business if they don't get money out
of them? They could stop them from using that patented
functionality, but you can usually design around such patents,
unless they're overly broad, so it's a small hindrance, not
really going to put you out of business. Of course, "traditional
mobile players" are a different issue, as they actually make
money by selling the features they're patenting.
On Monday, 28 October 2013 at 17:45:39 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
On 2013-10-28 18:33, Joakim wrote:
I actually talked to the head llvm guy at Apple about this
possibility a
couple years back and he was adamantly against anyone outside
closing up
parts of the compiler. Of course, he may not get to make that
decision
at Apple and we can't know the truth unless we peek at the
source for
the shipping compiler at Apple, but I haven't seen any
evidence that
llvm isn't developed in the open.
Have you?
No, but LLVM shipped by Apple might not be the same LLVM you
can access the source code to.
Yep, that's why I mentioned that "we can't know the truth unless
we peek at the source for the shipping compiler at Apple." :)
On Monday, 28 October 2013 at 19:02:35 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
On 28 October 2013 18:38, Joseph Rushton Wakeling
<[email protected]> wrote:
It certainly seems to be true that LLVM is moving faster
innovation-wise. I
don't know how much of that is down to any architectural
advantages, how
much might be because they support less targets and so have a
lower
maintenance burden, and how much of it is just the scale of
resources being
put into it.
I don't see it that way. Up until now at least I haven't seen
anything they do that wasn't already do-able in GCC. They just
do a
better job at PR (which is what you expect from Apple anyway).
Really? The claims that llvm has a cleaner codebase, is easier
to use because it's all properly split up into different
libraries, and introduces new features like better error
reporting: that's all "PR?"
