Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!

[Alberto Ruiz <aruiz gnome org>]

I think that overall, what GNU could do to change it is figure out what are the LLVM guys doing to be such an attractive compiler platform compared to GCC. LLVM is a compiler platform, it gives you many APIs and reusable components that you can use at different levels, for example, clang, a C compiler built on top of LLVM, allows you to do static analysis of code, quite handy if you are developing an IDE or if you want continuous integration.

In the graphics stack it is used to compile GLSL, OpenCL and other GPU/parallel languages down to the GPU native language.

From my point of view, if GCC is not providing what LLVM does, I can't see how using code that has a BSD-like license (and effectively becomes (L)GPL once linked to our stuff) does any harm to the values that we spread as a project.

While we are in the topic of keeping GNU relevant, I think a major effort to modernize autotools and other developer tools, document them properly, having a nice UI and make it more developer friendly is long overdue. In general I think that the core of GNU still keeps a 90s mindset. When you compare the developer experience of the GNU toolchain these days to, for example, .NET, iOS/XCode, Java/Eclipse... the dissapointment is huge.

If we don't keep GNU attractive to developers people will eventually stop writing free software. (And yes, for the wrong reasons, but sometimes being free as in beer is not enough).

I hope you find my input constructive.

2012/11/17 Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>

    Yes, the Mesa 3D project uses LLVM to dynamically generate machine code.
    As I understand it, one of the driving factors in the technology choice
    here was that the compiler is structured as a set of libraries with an
    API - in contrast to how GCC was historically.

    So in GNOME, we depend on both compilers now.

This design decision suggests that GNOME developers are focusing
solely on their specific goals, and not taking account the advance and
success of the GNU system as a whole.

If that is the case, what can we do to change it?

--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call

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Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz