4 ms·

GCC being freely available is by far the exception, historically. Such that I don't really get your point. Do we know why/how GCC was able to pull off being f

by taeric 4y ago

GCC being freely available is by far the exception, historically. Such that I don't really get your point. Do we know why/how GCC was able to pull off being free? And, as I said in a sibling thread, my assertion is that it took massive corporate spending for Sun to get inroads with Java. In large because they were competing with GCC.

skissane 4y ago
> Do we know why/how GCC was able to pull off being free? Because RMS is an ideological obsessive for whom software being free was more important than making money. Although he wrote a major Lisp implementation himself (Emacs Lisp), he saw C as the more pragmatic path to making free software widely available than Lisp. Also, as a former employee, MIT gave him a lot of (in-kind) support. (Actually GCC was not the first free compiler. RMS started out planning to turn LLNL's free compiler for a Pascal derivative, Pastel, into a C compiler. But he abandoned that approach, because the Pastel compiler was a big resource hog by the standards of the time – it was initially developed to run on a supercomputer, it wouldn't work on the Unix workstation RMS was using.) CMU Common Lisp was free, and CMU's research funding paid for it. But their focus was on Unix workstations, they never saw the value in porting it to x86 (let alone DOS/Windows). By the time the x86 port happened (done by volunteers, not paid for by CMU), Java had already taken off.
pjmlp 4y ago
Hardly anyone cared about GCC in those days, most compilers were still commercial. In fact, GCC only started to matter to UNIX folks, because Sun introduced the concept of user and developer UNIX workloads, and all UNIX vendors followed along, making the UNIX development tools into an additional package one had to buy. Thus the race to improve GCC started.
- dleslie 4y ago
  gcc was relevant on DOS and Windows thanks to djgpp; it was basically the only free option for a time.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    No one cared about it, Borland and Microsoft dominated, those that could not buy them, would get copies from a street bazar.
    - skissane 4y ago
      It was popular with people who came from a Unix background and wanted to port Unix software to DOS/Windows (or even OS/2). While the API differences were still a challenge, GCC did better at code ported from Unix than Borland/Microsoft/etc did - especially since a lot of that software was already being compiled under GCC on Unix anyway True that Borland/Microsoft was more popular among professional DOS/Windows developers, especially those for whom that was their native platform > those that could not buy them, would get copies from a street bazar Teenage me didn’t know of any “street bazaars” selling Microsoft/Borland developer tool warez. But I walked into the local computer shop and saw some modestly priced CD-ROMs, with GCC (among other things), and convinced my Dad to buy them for me.

by taeric 4y ago

skissane 4y ago

> Do we know why/how GCC was able to pull off being free? Because RMS is an ideological obsessive for whom software being free was more important than making money. Although he wrote a major Lisp implementation himself (Emacs Lisp), he saw C as the more pragmatic path to making free software widely available than Lisp. Also, as a former employee, MIT gave him a lot of (in-kind) support. (Actually GCC was not the first free compiler. RMS started out planning to turn LLNL's free compiler for a Pascal derivative, Pastel, into a C compiler. But he abandoned that approach, because the Pastel compiler was a big resource hog by the standards of the time – it was initially developed to run on a supercomputer, it wouldn't work on the Unix workstation RMS was using.) CMU Common Lisp was free, and CMU's research funding paid for it. But their focus was on Unix workstations, they never saw the value in porting it to x86 (let alone DOS/Windows). By the time the x86 port happened (done by volunteers, not paid for by CMU), Java had already taken off.

pjmlp 4y ago

Hardly anyone cared about GCC in those days, most compilers were still commercial. In fact, GCC only started to matter to UNIX folks, because Sun introduced the concept of user and developer UNIX workloads, and all UNIX vendors followed along, making the UNIX development tools into an additional package one had to buy. Thus the race to improve GCC started.

dleslie 4y ago
gcc was relevant on DOS and Windows thanks to djgpp; it was basically the only free option for a time.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  No one cared about it, Borland and Microsoft dominated, those that could not buy them, would get copies from a street bazar.
  - skissane 4y ago
    It was popular with people who came from a Unix background and wanted to port Unix software to DOS/Windows (or even OS/2). While the API differences were still a challenge, GCC did better at code ported from Unix than Borland/Microsoft/etc did - especially since a lot of that software was already being compiled under GCC on Unix anyway True that Borland/Microsoft was more popular among professional DOS/Windows developers, especially those for whom that was their native platform > those that could not buy them, would get copies from a street bazar Teenage me didn’t know of any “street bazaars” selling Microsoft/Borland developer tool warez. But I walked into the local computer shop and saw some modestly priced CD-ROMs, with GCC (among other things), and convinced my Dad to buy them for me.