[ayende]

Isn't that very much intentional on the part of GCC?

[colejohnson66]

Somewhat. Stallman claims to have tried to make it modular,[0] but also that he wants to avoid "misuse of [the] front ends".[1]

The idea is that you should link the front and back ends, to prevent out-of-process GPL runarounds. But because of that, the mingling of the front and back ends ended up winning out over attempts to stay modular.

[0]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00...

[1]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-01/msg00...

[phkahler]

>> The idea is that you should link the front and back ends, to prevent out-of-process GPL runarounds.

Valid points, but also the reason people wanting to create a more modular compiler created LLVM under a different license - the ultimate GPL runaround. OTOH now we have two big and useful compilers!

[Croak]

When gcc was built most compilers were proprietary. Stallman wanted a free compiler and to keep it free. The GPL license is more restrictive, but it's philosophy is clear. At the end of the day the code's writer can choose if and how people are allowed to use it. You don't have to use it, you can use something else or build you own. And maybe, just maybe Linux is thriving while Windows is dying because in the Linux ecosystem everybody works together and shares, while in Windows everybody helps together paying for Satya Nadellas next yacht.

[colechristensen]

Good lord Stallman is such a zealot and hypocrite. It's not open vs. closed it's mine vs. yours and he's openly declaring that he's nerfing software in order to prevent people from using it in a way he doesn't like. And refusing to talk about it in public because normal people hate that shit "misunderstanding" him.

--- From the post:

I let this drop back in March -- please forgive me.

  > Maybe that's the issue for GCC, but for Emacs the issue is to get detailed
  > info out of GCC, which is a different problem.  My understanding is that
  > you're opposed to GCC providing this useful info because that info would
  > need to be complete enough to be usable as input to a proprietary
  > compiler backend.

My hope is that we can work out a kind of "detailed output" that is enough for what Emacs wants, but not enough for misuse of GCC front ends.

I don't want to discuss the details on the list, because I think that would mean 50 messages of misunderstanding and tangents for each message that makes progress. Instead, is there anyone here who would like to work on this in detail?

[giancarlostoro]

That sounds like Stallman wants proprietary OSS ;)

If you're going to make it hard for anyone anywhere to integrate with your open source tooling for fear of commercial projects abusing them and not ever sharing their changes, why even use the GPL license?

[wahern]

Not anymore. Modularization is somewhat tangential, but for awhile Stallman did actively oppose rearchitecting GCC to better support non-free plugins and front-ends. But Stallman lost that battle years ago. AFAIU, the current state of GCC is the result of intentional technical choices (certain kinds of decoupling not as beneficial as people might think--Rust has often been stymied by lack of features in LLVM, i.e. defacto (semantic?) coupling), works in progress (decoupling ongoing), or lack of time or wherewithal to commit to certain major changes (decoupling too onerous).

[torginus]

Personally, I think when you are making bad technical decisions in service of legal goals (making it harder to circumvent the GPL), that's a sure sign that you made a wrong turn somewhere.

[demurgos]

It is intentional to avoid non-free projects from building on top of gcc components.

I am not familiar enough with gcc to know how it impacts out-of-tree free projects or internal development.

The decision was taken a long time ago, it may be worth revisiting it.

[janc_]

Over the years several frontends for languages that used to be out-of-tree for years have been integrated. So both working in-tree & outside are definitely possible.