...and the fact that GCC's monolithic architecture was designed explicitly to make it difficult for separate processes to interact with it, access intermediary representations, or incrementally compile. Probably the best example of GPL wankery there is.
If the front end and back end can be separated cleanly, then a company could put their proprietary compiler back end behind the GCC front end without violating the GPL. Stallman has always worried about things like this; his objections to virtual machines have a similar basis.
That sounds like the same strategies used by proprietary software companies who go through all sorts of loops to discourage uses that don't ideologically fit with them. Almost like Free's version of DRM.
Wow, and this is stated explicitly? Seems like cutting off the nose to spite the face. I guess ideology is more important than code quality to the FSF. They have every right to do it, of course, but as an outsider it seems counter-productive
I've heard this in quite a few places, RMS once quoted the reason we have an objective-c compiler is because people like apple to open source it to due to the architecture of gcc wouldn't let it be separate.
