Re: clang/emacs/ecb/semantic

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard Stallman writes:

 > Part of the reason why clang/llvm weakens our commnity, compared
 > with GCC, is that the clang front ends can feed their data to
 > nonfree tools.

Is that true, though?  GCC can produce not only GIMPLE trees but also
various forms of annotated RTL and dump them to files.  I believe that
it also accepts some of these representations as input.  Is it
possible to stop people from writing nonfree tools that use those
representations of programs?  I don't see how, unless you write a
Microsoft-style EULA that restricts use as well as distribution.  Ie,
people can write non-free assemblers that use the assembly output of
GCC, people can write non-free compilers that target the gas assembly
language, and so on, all in conformance with the letter of the GPL.

What am I missing?