Chris Lattner <clatt...@apple.com> writes:
> On Apr 26, 2010, at 12:23 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>>
>> Again, just for the record. History shows that this is not entirely
>> useless. People at NeXT wrote the Objective C frontend to GCC. They
>> did not intend to release the source code. The FSF objected. In the
>> end, NeXT wound up contributing the code, and that is why GCC has an
>> Objective C frontend. In other words, the whole process worked as the
>> GPL intended.
>
> This is a often repeated example, but you're leaving out the big
> part of the story (at least as far as I know). The license *did
> not* force the ObjC frontend to be merged back into GCC, there were
> other factors at work. This 'victory' has nothing to do with the
> license, but it did cause them to release the code.
Yes. I was pointing out that forcing the release of the code *also*
caused the code to be contributed to the FSF. As you say, other
factors were at work, but that's OK: there are always other factors.
> Beyond that, the changes to support Objective C 2.0 (and later) have
> never been merged back in, despite being published and widely
> available under the GPL. Also, the GNU runtime and the NeXT
> runtimes are wildly incompatible, and the ObjC frontend in GCC is
> one of the most disliked (I'll leave out the pejoratives :) because
> its design has not kept up with the other front-ends.
>
> Even in the shining example of the GPL succeeding, are you sure it
> was a good thing in retrospect? :)
That is due to a different set of other factors. Objective C is not a
shining example of the GPL succeeding. But it is an example of a case
where the GPL forced release of code *and* it was contributed to gcc,
which is exactly the case that you were skeptical of.
In other words: theory says one thing will happen ("GPL encourages
[FSF] software to fork"); history shows that a different thing
happened. I'm a pragmatist; given a reasonable choice, I prefer
history over theory.
Ian
