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LLVM was not created as reaction against the licensing model of GCC. It was created as a research project exploring: "transparent, lifelong program analysis and

by timtadh 11y ago

LLVM was not created as reaction against the licensing model of GCC. It was created as a research project exploring: "transparent, lifelong program analysis and transformation for arbitrary programs."[1] GCC and other compilers were not setup to do this. They needed to build an intermediate representation of a kind that was highly unusual for the time. That is where it originated, as pure research. Trying to build a better mouse trap. Not to become a GCC competitor. It did become one because it turned out they had some rather good ideas! The GPL is not harmful and I encourage you to utilize it when appropriate for it protects you (the original author) and your target users far more than BSD or other similar licenses. [1] http://llvm.org/pubs/2004-01-30-CGO-LLVM.html http://llvm.org/pubs/2004-01-30-CGO-LLVM.html Read full paper not just the abstract to get the full picture.

bsder 11y ago
> It was created as a research project exploring: "transparent, lifelong program analysis and transformation for arbitrary programs."[1] GCC and other compilers were not setup to do this. gcc was in fact set up to explicitly not be able to do this. The developers of gcc made understanding the intermediate forms as well as creating plugins as hard as possible specifically so that you couldn't get around the GPL. clang a direct result of attempting to coerce people with real money with the GPL.
- timtadh 11y ago
  > > It was created as a research project exploring: "transparent, lifelong program analysis and transformation for arbitrary programs."[1] GCC and other compilers were not setup to do this. > gcc was in fact set up to explicitly not be able to do this. GCC was originally very difficult to integrate with so that non-free programs could not be built on top of it. However, the creation of LLVM does not reduce to: "GCC was difficult to work with so we made this." There had been many attempts to make "Universal Compiler IRs". These attempts had not gone well. LLVM instead chose to do something at a unique level of abstraction that wasn't good for everything but was very good for its particular niche. Once again, read the paper, LLVM really wasn't created as a reaction against GCC.

by timtadh 11y ago

bsder 11y ago

> It was created as a research project exploring: "transparent, lifelong program analysis and transformation for arbitrary programs."[1] GCC and other compilers were not setup to do this. gcc was in fact set up to explicitly not be able to do this. The developers of gcc made understanding the intermediate forms as well as creating plugins as hard as possible specifically so that you couldn't get around the GPL. clang a direct result of attempting to coerce people with real money with the GPL.

timtadh 11y ago
> > It was created as a research project exploring: "transparent, lifelong program analysis and transformation for arbitrary programs."[1] GCC and other compilers were not setup to do this. > gcc was in fact set up to explicitly not be able to do this. GCC was originally very difficult to integrate with so that non-free programs could not be built on top of it. However, the creation of LLVM does not reduce to: "GCC was difficult to work with so we made this." There had been many attempts to make "Universal Compiler IRs". These attempts had not gone well. LLVM instead chose to do something at a unique level of abstraction that wasn't good for everything but was very good for its particular niche. Once again, read the paper, LLVM really wasn't created as a reaction against GCC.