[nycbug-talk] Sun News Roundup

[Miles Nordin]

>>>>> "c" == Miles Nordin <carton at ivy.net> writes:

     c> no, that is not the Sun behavior about which I complained.
     c> Please reread more carefully.

I just reread myself.  I wasn't specific at all, so snipping at Mark
to reread was unfair.

The problem I see when I follow the cooltools link, 

 http://cooltools.sunsource.net/gcc/

is that Sun has split gcc into two pieces, the front and back ends.
They've arranged for the two pieces to be connected to each other by
handing off files in /tmp, to evade the ``linking'' trigger in the GPL
(they disabled -pipe just to be extra careful).  Then they've replaced
the back-end with this Dr. Claw piece of unblushingly proprietary
software: no-source, $0 but no permission to redistribute binaries,
click-wrap garbage about agreeing not to publish benchmarks, u.s.w.

I believe that it *is* legal, and I also like the *function* of the
tool.  But don't like what Sun's done.  Sun is currently trading on a
reputation for creating and supporting open source communities, and
preserving said reputation should require respect for the communities
that create open source and their intent in choosing the licenses that
preserve them, and I think this grabby /tmp-linking trick disrespects
GNU's free software or (for Mark) ``software libre'' licenses, which
are certainly credible enough to deserve said respect, whether it's the
license you choose for your own community or not.
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