> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:11 AM
> From: "Frosku" <fro...@frosku.com>
> To: "Ian Lance Taylor" <i...@google.com>, chris.punc...@silogroup.org
> Cc: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 9:51 PM BST, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:26 PM Chris Punches via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> > > employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> > > behalf of my company I swear".
> > >
> > > Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
> >
> > For better or for worse, since the early '90s the majority of people
> > who do serious work on GCC have been hired by companies that want to
> > do serious work on GCC. After all, it's a win-win: the company gets
> > work done, the GCC programmer gets well paid. The effect is that most
> > of the major GCC contributors work for a relatively small number of
> > companies. There are of course many exceptions, but that is the
> > general rule.
> >
> > Ian
>
> In my view, if people employed by a small number of American companies
> succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative of
> the free software grassroots community, this is not a win-win. This is
> powerful US corporations removing something our community created from
> our community's oversight and moving it into a space where it's governed
> by representatives of Silicon Valley rather than a membership-based non
> profit.
>
> Whilst everyone's contributions to the software should be welcomed, I
> don't think you'll find many FSF members celebrating the impact of paid
> Corporate engineers on GCC if this sorry state of affairs comes to be.
The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear. When people
at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use it,
and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to distribute
it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
> >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
>
