Re: LLVM

[Nicola Pero]

>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