Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

This whole discussion started because ESR had some information that was at least five years out of date: he thought that GCC was deliberately nonmodular and unfriendly to extension to block use by proprietary code. But the legal barriers to GCC plugins were removed long ago, and this was negotiated in a way that was satisfactory to both RMS and to gcc developers way back in 2007.

Some gcc developers agree with RMS's vision, others don't. Some sit more on the "free software" side of the argument, others on the "open source" side. This doesn't impede their ability to work together, especially since RMS isn't involved in GCC development and hasn't been for a long time. Outsiders launching software-ideology flame wars based on bad or outdated information (like comparisons between llvm and gcc error messages that use gcc 4.2, seven major releases ago) aren't helping. Neither does cross-posting between development lists of competing compilers to get their developers to argue with each other.

The competition between llvm and gcc has greatly improved both compilers. It's a good thing, I think. But any comparisons made between the two should be accurate and current.

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