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...and the fact that GCC's monolithic architecture was designed explicitly to make it difficult for separate processes to interact with it, access intermediary
by blasdel 17y ago
...and the fact that GCC's monolithic architecture was designed explicitly to make it difficult for separate processes to interact with it, access intermediary representations, or incrementally compile. Probably the best example of GPL wankery there is.
- paulgb 17y agoReally? Why would they do that?
- etal 17y agoIf the front end and back end can be separated cleanly, then a company could put their proprietary compiler back end behind the GCC front end without violating the GPL. Stallman has always worried about things like this; his objections to virtual machines have a similar basis.
- Scriptor 17y agoThat sounds like the same strategies used by proprietary software companies who go through all sorts of loops to discourage uses that don't ideologically fit with them. Almost like Free's version of DRM.
- paulgb 17y agoWow, and this is stated explicitly? Seems like cutting off the nose to spite the face. I guess ideology is more important than code quality to the FSF. They have every right to do it, of course, but as an outsider it seems counter-productive
- blasdel 17y agoWitness the saga of ECGS -- people had to fork GCC because the FSF refused to take patches from the community. The FSF's concern was to have employees maintaining (and controlling the development of) the software and as far as they were concerned that was that.
- jmillikin 17y ago[citation needed]
- hypermatt 17y agoI've heard this in quite a few places, RMS once quoted the reason we have an objective-c compiler is because people like apple to open source it to due to the architecture of gcc wouldn't let it be separate.
- akkartik 17y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542804 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542804