Whether you find it likely or unlikely to happen is not part of the equation, copyleft was created to _ensure_ as far as possible that the end user would have c

Whether you find it likely or unlikely to happen is not part of the equation, copyleft was created to _ensure_ as far as possible that the end user would have certain rights. >The ability to develop plugins for GCC has existed for years now, but nobody has used it to do the evil things RMS insisted would happen (remember, he blocked the creation of the plugin interface for many years). First off the plugin api is unstable which discourages out-of-tree patches, secondly there's the gcc runtime library exception which only allows distribution of proprietary binaries created with gcc if said binaries was not generated using proprietary plugin(s). >Nobody is proposing creating proprietary plugins for GCC. People are proposing a GPL licensed plugin to export the AST for use by emacs. But allowing for that will also make it possible to use a proprietary backend with GCC, thus allowing the circumventing of rights which copyleft licensed software is there to ensure. It doesn't matter if you think it's 'unlikely to happen', again copyleft exists to ensure that this does not happen.