Re: Contributing LLVM.org patches to gud.el

[Eric S. Raymond]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden>:
> More precisely, Apple intends LLVM and Clang to make GCC cease to be a
> signal success and a reason for all sorts of companies to work on a
> compiler that always gives users freedom.

This is silly.  Apple couldn't care less whether or not GCC is a success.
What Apple needs is for a copylefted compiler not to be the *only* success.

GCC's existence does not prevent Apple from compiling proprietary GPU code.
The absence of a realistic *alternative* to GCC prevented that, but having 
fixed that problem Apple has no reason to care whether GCC lives or dies.

As David Kastrup notes, the existence of the clang project is victory - it's
Apple conceding in practice that it is no longer realistically possible to
develop some kinds of critically important tools in a proprietary lockup.

As a result of this victory, all sorts of companies are now working on
*two* compilers that always give users freedom.  One is GCC.  The
other is clang (I haven't noticed my freedom being diminished even a
little bit when I set CC=clang). That is a good thing.

Apple is not composed of angels.  Apple does things that you and I
would both regard as scummy.  But to suppose that Apple has any
desire, need, or intention to attack GCC is to attribute an importance
to GCC in Apple's eyes that it has not possessed since the day clang
shipped 1.0.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>