"but their development has been heavily sponsored by Apple, whose interest in the project stems from their interest in excising the GPL (and specifically the GP

"but their development has been heavily sponsored by Apple, whose interest in the project stems from their interest in excising the GPL (and specifically the GPLv3) from their entire development stack." This is not accurate in any respect. It would be accurate if you said "early development" (original development was sponsored by UIUC). Their interest in the project was not at all in excising the GPL. They didn't care. That was a political position they took once on a GCC mailing list. But lawyers do not run Apple. If they wanted to keep using GCC, they would have kept using GCC. They wanted faster build times, a better infrastructure, and something they felt they could invest in and not have this amazing uncertainty about where it was going and what it's goals were. They also didn't want to have engineering stymied by the politics of GCC (it is less political now, it was very political then).