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I thought GPLv3 adoption by GCC was what really lit the flames on moving to llvm by commercial entities?
by owlbite 1y ago
I thought GPLv3 adoption by GCC was what really lit the flames on moving to llvm by commercial entities?
- tehjoker 1y agoYou might know this history better than me.
- fsckboy 1y agoyou only need to worry about GPLv3 if you are modifying gcc in source and building it and distributing that. Just running gcc does not create a GPLv3 infection. And glibc et al are library licensed so they don't infect what you build either, most especially if you are not modifying its source and rebuilding it.
- johannes1234321 1y agoStill some companies try hard to avoid GPLv3, see Apple, who either provide old GPLv2 licensed software or invest in BSD/MIT replacements.
- o11c 1y agoAnd what we've seen from e.g. Apple is that "make a private fork and only distribute binaries" is exactly what they wanted the whole time.
- wmf 1y agoyou only need to worry about GPLv3 if you are modifying gcc in source and building it and distributing that. That's the context here. If you build a new compiler based on GCC, GPL applies to you. If you build a new compiler based on LLVM it doesn't.
- fsckboy 1y agothe context here doesn't actually specify whether we are talking about companies using llvm sources to create proprietary compilers (or maybe integrated with a proprietary IDE) or using llvm to quickly bootstrap and craft a compiler for a new processor, new language, etc., where they will distribute the source to the compiler anyway but such a compiler or IDE would not GPLv3 infect it's users' target sources and binaries.
- int_19h 1y agoThe main problem with GPLv3 specifically from the perspective of various commercial vendors is the patent clause.