Comment by bayindirh
10 hours ago
Personally, I observe that Rust is forced everywhere in the Linux ecosystem. One of my biggest concerns is uutils, mostly because of the permissive license it bears. The Linux kernel and immediate userspace shall be GPL licensed to protect the OS in my opinion.
I have a personal principle of not using LLVM-based languages (equal parts I don't like how LLVM people behave against GCC and I support free software first and foremost), so I personally watch gccrs closely, and my personal ban on Rust will be lifted the day gccrs becomes an alternative compiler.
This brings me to the second biggest reservation about Rust. The language is moving too fast, without any apparent plan or maturing process. Things are labeled unstable, there's no spec, and apparently nobody is working on these very seriously, which you also noted.
I don't understand why people are hostile against gccrs? Can you point me to some discussions?
> It feels somewhat like a corporate takeover, not something where good and benign technology is most important.
As I noted above, the whole Rust ecosystem feels like it's on a crusade, esp. against C++. I write C++, and I play with pointers a lot, and I understand the gotchas, and also the team dynamics and how it's becoming harder to write good software with larger teams regardless of programming language, but the way Rust propels itself forward leaves a very bad taste in the mouth, and I personally don't like to be forced into something. So, while gccrs will remove my personal ban, I'm not sure I'll take the language enthusiastically. On the other hand, another language Rust people apparently hate, Go, ticks all the right boxes as a programming language. Yes, they made some mistakes and turned back from some of them at the last moment, but the whole ordeal looks tidier and better than Rust.
In short, being able to borrow-check things is not a license to push people around like this, and they are building themselves a good countering force with all this enthusiasm they're pumping around.
Oh, I'll only thank them for making other programming languages improve much faster. Like how LLVM has stirred GCC devs into action and made GCC a much better compiler in no time.
The language is moving too fast? The language is moving extremely slowly imo, too slowly for a lot of features. C++ is moving faster at this point.
LLVM is free software. You appear to be making the common mistake of confusing the permissive vs. copyleft distinction with the open source vs. free software distinction.
Open source and free software mean almost exactly the same set of software; the only difference between the two terms, according to RMS and other free software advocates, is the emphasis. Sort of like the difference between the Gulf of America and the Gulf of Mexico: they mean the same body of water, but reflect a different viewpoint about it.
This confusion arises because RMS prefers the term "free software" over "open source", and also prefers copyleft over permissive licenses, so people sort of get the idea that they are the same distinction.
At least concerning Richard M. Stallman's take on this subject, this characterization is completely wrong.
RMS certainly does not consider the difference between open source and free software to be merely one of 'emphasis.' According to him they are completely different animals. Here are his words on their difference[0]:
> 'When we call software “free,” we mean it respects the users’ essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” ... Nearly all open source software is free software; the two terms describe almost the same category of software. But they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free soft- ware is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users’ freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the free software movement, however, non-free software [including non-free open source software] is a social problem, and moving to free software is the solution.'
[emphasis and square brackets mine]
It's not that RMS 'prefers the term "free software" over "open source"' but that he prefer software be free instead of non-free. The source being open is just an incomplete precondition for being free.
[0] https://courses.cs.duke.edu/common/compsci092/papers/open/st...
> Open source and free software mean almost exactly the same set of software
> Nearly all open source software is free software; the two terms describe almost the same category of software.
I see no disagreement, how is GP "completely wrong"?
This is nonsense, and I have no idea why you need to believe it.
Open Source can be used as Free Software because Open Source can be used as proprietary software or anything else, as long as you include the license or mention the author somewhere or whatever. But these are both standards for actual licenses, and the actual licenses are different. Copyleft software can not be included in your proprietary software.
Copyleft software is restrictive. You are required to allow people to access it, and required to redistribute it in source form if you are redistributing it in compiled form (or over the network for modern copyleft licenses.) You are also required to include all of the changes that you have made to the things that you have compiled within that source distribution, and to also distribute other code that is required to to make your software package work under the same licensing.
The confusion is only in people spreading misinformation trying to confuse the two things. You clearly seem to know that RMS can prefer copyleft over permissive licenses, but still need to pretend that there's no difference between the two. If you know that someone can prefer white chocolate to dark chocolate, there's obviously something wrong with you if you in the same breath say that there is no difference between white chocolate and dark chocolate. Why deceive people? What's the point?
If they're all exactly the same, everybody should be using the GPL in Linux then. Shouldn't even be a thought. Why waste time forcing corporate-friendly licenses if it doesn't matter and some people are against them? Shouldn't parsimony rule then?
Wait till you see the vulnerabilities introduced... Makes you wonder how organic it really is