On 29 Feb., 16:51, Nicola Pero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >One of the design goals for my runtime was to provide a superset of > the functionality required > > for Objective-C 2.0. It was also designed with the aim of future > integration with LLVM (and has > > a compatible license) > > (puzzled) :-) > > Do you really think that the LLVM license is a good license for our > compiler / runtime language library ? ;-) > > I mean, IIRC we got our current Objective-C compiler from NeXT > *because* of the GNU GPL. > If GCC had had a license like the LLVM one, we might not even have a > free Objective-C compiler > available! :-) > > I understand why Apple wants that kind of license - so that they get > our improvements to the compiler, > but we don't get theirs. They have no requirement to give anything > back to us. :-( > > GCC's license is much better for us - and much worse for Apple - if > you contribute to GCC, Apple > can take your improvements for free (ie, they use them in the > compiler they ship on their computers), > but then at least they have to give back *their* improvements for > free, because of the GNU GPL (well, there > might be work required to merge back the improvements into mainline > GCC trunk, but you definitely > get to see them, and you get a GPL license to use them). That seems > fair to me ;-) > > With the LLVM license, we might never see any of the Apple code/ > improvements. > > I think that's a major disadvantage. To me, it's a big step > backwards from the GNU GPL, and I won't > be using LLVM or contributing to it - nor to any Objective-C runtime > library with a similar license. > > From a technical standpoint, I'd love to see a free software > alternative to GCC to compile Objective-C, > but this is not a convincing alternative - the license seems designed > to abuse contributors. > > Thanks
I am not a specialist on licenses - but can't gcc absorb some of the good components of LLVM? With that, gcc 5.0 would be as flexible and powerful (I understood LLVM has a better intermediate language). IMHO, changing GNUstep in any way to require LLVM is generally not a good move. It makes life even more difficult to have GNUstep included in any Linux distribution because we can't influcence them to provide a LLVM ObjC compiler. Or we have to maintain our own compilers. -- hns _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
