GCC front-ends [LWN.net]

GCC front-ends

Posted Jan 3, 2025 2:24 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: GCC front-ends by ceplm
Parent article: An Algol 68 front end for GCC

> Steve Job being a control freak, who cannot live without having complete toolset under his control

That was never the case and it's pretty easy to prove: to this very day every macOS device carries bash (version 3.2.57), screen (version 4.0.3) and many other tools not controlled by Apple.

It was always about GPLv3. That's why Apple never upgraded past GCC 4.2.

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GCC front-ends

Posted Jan 4, 2025 20:25 UTC (Sat) by Heretic_Blacksheep (guest, #169992) [Link] (1 responses)

Doesn't prove anything.

The reason that's the case is because the BSD software MacOS/Darwin are based on never upgraded past GCC 4 because of GPL v3. That's one remove. What it does say is that because LLVM has a vastly more permissive license it's more acceptable to businesses who are in the business of selling software tool sets without giving hints away of what's in their secret sauce. It's business as usual in exploiting unpaid labor whether it's gladly or grudgingly granted without doing more than tossing the open source world a bone from time to time.

GCC front-ends

Posted Jan 4, 2025 23:26 UTC (Sat) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link]

> It's business as usual in exploiting unpaid labor

I would assume that the vast majority of labor that goes into LLVM is paid, much of it by Apple.

The cause of free software is hurt by pretending that free software spontaneously comes into existence from unpaid hobbyists—it means that businesses who would pay for that labor think, it's going to happen on its own whether or not we pay for it, and if we start to pay for it we might prevent it from happening.