For example, see shader compilers for GPUs. How many open shader compilers do you see around? Is there any motivation to open them?

On the other side, during the 90's, we have seen many vendors come with new CPU ISAs, extensions of existing ISAs, new SOCs, etc. Many of them didn't have resources or will to write a new C compiler, so they wanted to use someting existing. They were willing to write new GCC backend - and GCC license basically forced them to be open. After this, there was no point in keeping ISA specification secret.

LLVM/clang does not have this effect. It pretty much rewards for being closed. So today, we have shitty (especially on ARM-SoCs) shader compilers for secret ISAs, and you aren't going to see their sources anytime soon.

I would love to hear from anyone with more expertise in this realm who might be able to dispute this claim in any way... otherwise this seems to be a smoking gun in GCC's favor!

The situation with architectures in 90s sounds about right: Those that were kept closed (and where a gcc backend was thus no option for the vendor - mostly embedded stuff) have to this day shitty compilers with unpredictable optimizers.

I'd also like to note LLVM/clang didn't gain large non-apple marketshare until GCC adopted GPLv3 which has more to with it's stagnation than anything IMO. v2 is palatable to many business needs, v3 is not.

The rubber apparently meets the road with the NVidia shader compiler.

Only if you can convince people to use your architecture. The tools being closed is a minus in that, and must be taken into account with a lot of other stuff. A closed dev environment may well drown a brand-new ecosystem that you're trying to bootstrap.

Sony recently contributed back a ton of LLVM and clang stuff from their PS4 project, by the way. Why would they do that if keeping it closed was so rewarding?

Apple and Google do not contribute code freely, nor do they contribute a significant amount of their code. The contributions are limited to areas in which an advantage exists. One only has to look at the machinations present in other development platforms to realize the threat. Consider what's happened with Java in recent years. Or look to Swift. Or to the entire Microsoft ecosystem which was built in part on a foundation of open source. BSD licensed code permeates the Windows environment; to ask "what's the concern" belies a rather stunning ignorance of Microsoft's behavior over the three prior decades.

As opposed to their own ineptitude (e.g. Vista and Windows 8) or the changing of the guard from original founders?

I'm certain open source played a role, but I suspect a secondary one. Heck, if post XP Windows didn't suck so much, I and my parents (who nowadays run what I build them) would be using it instead of Linux for our desktops.

Linux is still not a significant player on desktops. Microsoft is still completely dominating that space.

Windows has the mindshare of the masses. When many upper-middle class white Americans want to write a document, they can only fathom word. When they want to do a spreadsheet, they can only fathom Excel. When they want to draw, they can only fathom Photoshop.

It isn't about options or features or anything, I'm talking about the super majority of people who cannot any longer comprehend the existence of anything but what they know - where being presented with Linux destroys their world view. They talk about OSX like its an easy bake oven rather than another computer, or as if its another desktop UI for Windows that also runs Office.

Which is why Microsofts open source efforts are pretty much all on the developer end. They know their userbase is completely ignorant to everything just the way they intended, and it would take years of retraining to push the public conscience away from the mindset that Microsoft Windows is the personal computer, and everything else is some gadget.

Servers are more complicated. In the mid-90s Windows NT started dropping in quality, and the much older decision to have mandatory file locking resulted in situations where creating a server with a major MS server application could require ~ 20 reboots. And many more bug and security fixes require reboots than they do on UNIX(TM) based/inspired platforms.

Then one could argue ineptitude in marketing when Microsoft didn't cut deals that could have made their software competitive for mass installations. I really wonder about that, because so many of these need source, but it's "a path not traveled", except internally with Azure.

This is simply false, actually. But of course, you have no evidence of this, only rhetoric, while i actually see literally every code contribution google makes.

More than 10%?

More than 1%?

You are certainly aware that the vast majority of code is under strict restrictions and will be leveraged for competitive/controlling purposes rather than being shared. Employees wishing to freely contribute code in these domains will have their requests denied.

We've both been employed by large SV companies; we both know how this works. The majority of software will be used in an attempt to control the market.

?????? None of this is true. I mean, literally none of this. I don't even know where to begin.

Google does not open source the VAST majority of their code -- it remains tightly restricted. Surely agree this is an accurate statement?

As written, actually, i don't agree with it.

Google has open sourced > 100 million lines of source code, depending on how you count.

I can't tell you what percent this is, but it is quite significant

It is the vast majority of a number of products, and not the vast majority of a number of other products.

In fact, for some subsidiaries, all of the code is open source. For some, it isn't.

So your statement depends on a lot - who are you counting, what is "their code" (Code we've written, code we've modified, or code we use), etc

If you make a detailed enough statement, i'd probably agree. But as written, there are plenty of cases where google open sources the vast majority of it's code.

What has happened with Java in recent years?

One thing i can think of is that the 'official' Sun/Oracle JDK has gone from being closed source, to having a second-class GPL'd derivative, to being built on a GPL'd core. The amount of proprietary closed-source code has gone from 4% to 1% to nothing that doesn't have a free replacement today.

Your feigned ignorance is disingenuous. An enormous legal battle over the platform took place within the past decade.

We are very lucky that the outcome was favorable and that the platform has been able to continue to improve.

Sun Microsystems basically grabbed BSD development by hiring up a lot of good people and running with it. It took a while for the various free BSD's to come into their own.

Basically, with "bsd licensed" software, if a big company hired up all the developers, they could take it proprietary and out-compete fork efforts.

I don't think it happens often, but it's not impossible, either.

The AT&T lawsuit and the end of DARPA BSD funding and that research group at UCB didn't have a lot to do with that? That was several years after Sun got in bed with AT&T and announced that BSD based SunOS was doomed.

I don't know, but I wonder.

There's also the fact that the internet was far less available in that day and age, making it more difficult to get good people involved.

I don't think it's a big risk, but like I said, I don't think it's impossible either.

Well, look, sure, if you hire all the developers that are working on something and understand it, you can probably out-compete other implementations even if all you have the old developers do on your proprietary project is write up specs from which a different set of developers build a legally non-derivative interoperable implementation.

That may be a risk with permissively-licensed Free software, but its also a risk with copyleft Free software and proprietary software.

To resolve your confusion in this area, perhaps you should consult an Oracle.