GCC 4.2.1 Released 449
larry bagina writes "GCC 4.2.1 was released 4 days ago. Although this minor update would otherwise be insignificant, it will be the final GPL v2 release; all future releases will be GPL v3. Some key contributors are grumbling over this change and have privately discussed a fork to stay as GPL v2. The last time GCC forked (EGCS), the FSF conceded defeat. How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?"
How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt? (Score:1, Interesting)
by not shoveling GPL3 down our throats?
Fact lite submission (Score:3, Interesting)
I call bull. (Score:5, Interesting)
So, user number 561269, would you please elaborate on the subject and cite any credible source supporting your view that a major contributor to GCC is considering to fork and "have it their way"? Your posting thoroughly lacks that kind of information right now, and therefore I think it deserves being tagged bogus or useless.
Thanks in advance for clearing this up.
- c0l0
(who's growing tired of all this anti-GPLv3-FUD swellig so much recently fast)
evolution in action (Score:4, Interesting)
If the GPL v2 objections are unfounded or astroturfing, then the GPL v2 forks will die.
I think the grumbling will blow over; I don't see any serious problems with the GPL v3. In fact, the fact that GPL v3 is compatible with more open source licenses seems like a big advantage.
GPL v2, v3 or *BSD? (Score:3, Interesting)
I am certainly not a lawyer, but MS has a ton of lawyers that seem to have become experts in the GPL arena and they seem to have little fear of GPL v2, but v3 seems to have them concerned. It seems that if developers want to stick with v2, then they may as well go all the way to the FreeBSD license. v3 is the future of free and open source projects that want to remain free in both senses until MS gets brave enough to sue over some vague patents. But if they can get enough partners like Linspire and Novell, they will have crippled much of the spirit that drives opensource. I plan on supporting companies that are standing up to the MS bullying in whatever ways I can.
Re:How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt? (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose that a lot of free software authors feel that the FSF is being a little heavy handed. In fairness, it's hard to see how (after consultations lasting more than a year) that the foundation could have handled this better. All the same, there are inevitably going to be people who are not comfortable with the new licence. Given a choice of accept v3 or start a fork, it's perhaps inevitable that people who have invested a lot of effort in GNU projects are going to regard the licence as an imposition.
The new licence was always going to be divisive, although in the light of the MS-Novell pact, I think the benefits will be worthwhile in the long run. But that doesn't mean that devs on large projects like GCC don't have a valid point.
The trouble is that there's nothing now to be done about it, but to see how the dice fall.
Re:I call bull. (Score:1, Interesting)
Call all /. lawers (or not) (Score:4, Interesting)
I -do- however have a portion of code that I keep locked up for a commercial application, if I start using a GPL v3 GCC will I be putting myself into peril?
Incidently, I'm not in the US, but well... sort of, I'm in Australia, which is almost as good as another US state *sigh*.
A (Fruit) Fly in the Ointment? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone care to speculate on how Apple might react to gcc going GPL3, perhaps they may actually fork it themselves...
Just my 2 cents (Score:2, Interesting)
That being said all this GPL3, tivo this tivo that stuff is confusing the hell out of me. I release my plugins free to anyone using the applications they are designed for, I don't however release the source code. You can call me lazy all you want and generally I will agree you are correct, but this license mine field that I have to worry about when making my plugins on Linux is getting annoying to say the least. I work long enough days making the stuff you see on tv and the movies look pretty so I don't have time to go following up on all this license news.
Fault Windows all you want but the worries you have with licenses on Windows is slightly less then Linux, notice I SLIGHTLY easier. I'm halfway tempted to switch my development to a Mac and dump my Linux support to not worry about it ever again. This is pretty sad since I ENJOY Linux, I've been running nothing but Linux the past 5 years. I have better things to do then worry "Opps, shit did I link with something that requires I release the source".
Like I have said in all my previous posts I like Linux, I like it a lot, but I'm sorry to say I don't view the FSF as the best people representing Linux. This is just my very small insignificant opinion and I have no problem with others disagreeing, if things keep going the way they are though I might just have to start looking at another platform. And no I don't say this because I think people care whether I use linux or not, I say it because I DONT WANT TO USE ANYTHING ELSE.
meanwhile, the evidence is missing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dual License (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:why does anybody care? (Score:3, Interesting)
main.c:
#include stuff
#__INSERT__REAL__CODE__HERE
main(){
call_real_code();
exit 0;
}
The compiler is then hacked to insert the actual code which does the work where it sees #__INSERT__REAL__CODE__HERE, but this version of the compiler is never distributed.
Voila! You can distribute the above file under GPL and it doesn't do someone who wants to modify the code any good because they need your hacked version of the compiler. But you never distributed the compiler, so you're not obliged to distribute the changes you made.
I'm not sure this technique would be affected by GPLv3. You could still reveal "this is how you change the hardware to load any image rather than just the one we distribute" without revealing what your code actually was.
Re:I call bull. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just my 2 cents (Score:2, Interesting)
My not knowning this is from my lack of knowledge with Apple so forgive me for not knowing. If I at some time do decide to switch platforms I will have to read up more about each one and the pro's and con's that each have.
> I'm witness to the awesome power of FUD.
This has nothing to do with FUD, am I wrong for disagreeing with the way the FSF is handling things as of late? Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and mine just so happens to be that if things keep going the way they are I may decide to look to other operating systems. Why would I stay with a community when I don't agree with the way they practice things?
It's not that I have a problem with OSS, I like the general idea of it and I applaud anyone that is part of the community, even I have released source code for a plugin that I created which used GPL source code. On my webiste www.nfxplugins.com you can download the package of plugins and you will see I have included the source for a plugin that used the Reihnhard04 method of tone mapping source code.
Re:Fact lite submission (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably anyone who thinks it's a terribly bad idea to change licences midstream through the life of a product. They should have done what Samba is doing and declare a clean break at a major version change. It would be less confusing and far more clearcut to say that gcc 4.2.x is GPL v2 and 4.4.x is GPL3.
State of GCC development (Score:2, Interesting)
GCC performance hasn't improved in years. You don't have to believe me for it, just check the GCC developers own performance tracking:
https://vmakarov.108.redhat.com/nonav/spec/compar
Essentially, it says that GCC has gotten slower at compiling and the generated code is no faster. Quite a sad result given the amount of contributors and large "improvements" that are constatly made.
What did improve is standard compliance. GCC is very good there now. But so are the latest Microsoft and Intel compilers. And they *do* generate faster code in newer versions.
Essentially, if this situation keeps going on, Free Software will have to cope with a growing disadvantage compared to Windows, just because its compiler is stagnating. That's quite sad.
The only glimmer of hope is that nowdays many optimizations aren't turned on at -O2 because they're so slow. Maybe those can turn the tide somewhat. But if you look at a Linux installation, -O2 is still the most used flag. And the situation is sad
Possibly, but not legal ones (Score:5, Interesting)
Since I am strongly opposed to GPLv3 and anything that uses it, I am not going to upgrade my gcc any further than 4.2.1, which I'll probably do today. This means that uSTL, and my other five projects on SourceForge, may have problems compiling on later gcc releases, even though I will not intentionally put any incompatibilities in my code. Not being able to predict the future, I don't know whether these problems would be minor ones or major ones, but I do know that unless they expose some fundamental problem with my code, I will reject any bugs related to them and state explicitly that any gcc > 4.2.1 is not supported and never will be.
Now, you probably wouldn't care about this. After all, I only had a few thousand downloads - a minute fraction of the developers in the world. And you might say "oh, who needs this guy's code anyway?" But I have a feeling I'm not the only one, and I do occasionally contribute to projects other than my own. Perhaps you don't care if you lose my skills and the skills of all those other developers, but I suspect that they do all add up to quite a bit, and while you might not notice it at first, the GPLv3 camp might get lonelier and emptier as time passes.
Re:The threat... (Score:5, Interesting)
I read the GCC mailing list. I haven't heard or seen any grumbling. Nothing I'd call significant. The most grumbling I've read is on how to deal with the branching and labeling/versioning which always seems to be a GCC issue; it's a major release number with no new features, when major release number imply new features... Read this [gnu.org]. There are closed branches of GCC, ones that vendors may add custom support for their hardware to, stuff like that, those people will have to change things. There was some discussion about how you license patches, purely an academic discussion on licensing though. Like I said, I haven't seen any grumbling and it simply doesn't affect end-users.
I also read LKML and I don't think that that is terribly significant, Linus brings up some points that seem to go un-addressed elsewhere. There is also some disagreement about how something like Linux goes through the process of being recopyrighted, you see there are people that are dead that have contributed large amounts of code. With Linux in particular, nobody was requested to re-assign their copyright to anyone like they are with GCC and a lot GNU projects. Really the only serious disagreement I've seen anywhere is from companies that exploit free software and are worried that they might have to share their substandard source code or rewrite the free components that make up the heart of their applications. Some of the hacks from the magazines are trying to stir the pot a little but that's it. It's unfortunate, some of the folks that really benefit the most from free software, folks that have products that exist because free software makes it possible for them to afford to make software, are now trying to attack and undermine the very software they depend upon.
Re:LLVM (Score:3, Interesting)
The license of glibc is much more interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
In contrast, if glibc some day moves to LGPLv3, what will happen to GPLv2-only applications and libraries (git, Qt, MySQL,
Re:Fact lite submission (Score:2, Interesting)
That is *not* the issue and its damn deceiptful of RMS and the gpl3 pushers to say it is. You *can* modify the tivo software, and you have always been able to do so. Tivo has decided to lock down their *hardware* and that is what gave rms a hissy fit.
http://public.www.planetmirror.com/pub/tivo/ [planetmirror.com]
Thats right go ahead and take thir code use it as you see fit..
GPLv4? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does the FSF have the trademark on GNU Public License? What is the third party called it something else, but declared it to be a newer version of the GNU Public License?
Re:LLVM (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LLVM / C++ backend is a total showstopper (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? Are you implying that LLVM only compiles C++ code? GCC is written in C, can it only compile C code?
LLVM currently handles C, C++ and Objective-C (on OSX only) quite well, though with a bit of work on llvm-gcc it could easily handle Ada (Duncan from AdaCore is working on this), Java and Fortran. LLVM is also used to compile the OpenGL shader language, both by Apple internally and in a branch in Mesa. There's also a working llvm-qemu prototype using LLVM's JIT.
GCC isn't nearly as broad as LLVM. GCC is a compiler. LLVM is a compiler toolkit, JIT, static analysis and dynamic analysis framework, an instruction set, and a compile-time link-time and run-time optimizer. By contrast, GCC supports more languages in and produces code for more backends out. The difference is that LLVM can grow new front-ends and back-ends, but GCC can't grow LLVM's features.
Re:How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is the problem with the exceptions. It gives too much power for individual or small groups of authors to force the majority down a path they don't like. Better not to get into that sort of contract.
Re:Fact lite submission (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fact lite submission (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fact lite submission (Score:1, Interesting)
GPLv3 was created by Stallman after M$ found a loophole they could possibly exploit in the V2 license. Basically V3 keeps M$ and others like them from stealing and shutting down our world with lawyers and endless litigation.
There are clauses in V3 that allow you to release your code and maintain your patents. V3 is much more flexible. However V3s default clauses prevent M$ from undermining all we've worked for. That's why M$ is trying so desperately, even hiring people lawyers and bloggers, to spread FUD about V3.