379 karma · joined August 4, 2011
"One advantage (from Nvidia’s point of view) not mentioned is that llvm is licensed under a BSD style agreement. This means Nvidia don’t have to release the source code of any modifications or additions they make (they said these will be kept closed source); gcc is licensed under the GNU general public license which requires source to be released. Arch rivals AMD (well, the ATI bit of AMD that does graphics hardware) also promote llvm and I’m sure Nvidia does not want to help them in any way."
The GPL does not require the modifications to the source code to be released. It just states that if the modified software is distributed, it must comply with the well-known GPL requirements.
It is obviously an advance if they're at least being discussed, but there's a long road until these ideals come true. And as the author said, we're beginning to inherit the responsibility.
Moreover, it is not one piece of the 'sad elitism' that took place after the news about dmr arrived. I saw some dozens of comments splattered over different places following the line 'you must definitely know who he was,' accompanied by some generic complaint about unfair coverage by news media over Mr. Jobs passing. Though I agree with some of these views, I don't think it makes the fair eulogy Dennis Ritchie deserves.
Dennis' importance will never be measured by any kind of comparison or relativization; it is hugely obvious, it persisted and is going to persist by many decades. We here know it. Those who don't, though, have the right to understand what he made possible. I think the article succeeds on this purpose.