On 4/18/21 1:08 PM, Christopher Dimech wrote:
The cause IMO is accessibility to other projects, most notably compiler
researchers and students who find it a lot easier to target llvm than
gcc because compiler-as-a-library. License may have been a factor for
some of those uses (e.g. I know some who think copyleft is not free
enough and BSD style licensing is the *real* freedom), but concluding
that it is the major reason is to delude ourselves.
Originally, the LLVM License was derived from the X11 License and the
3-Clause BSD License, both licenses conforming to the definition of
free software. Apple officially hired Chris Lattner in 2005, giving
him a team to work on LLVM.
It is irrelevant to the point I'm making. If you're trying to assert
that Lattner's hiring by Apple was the driving force behind the current
llvm adoption then like I said before, it's blinkered. Read my response
again for a deeper context.
It is also the reason why gcc does not even figure in situations where a
larger project would need AOT or JIT compilation; we had to concede that
ground all because of the FSF/GNU fears that companies would make
proprietary compilers out of a gcc compiler-as-a-library.
Listen very carefully - In the first quarter of 2011, Keith Chuvala
began discussing the need to drop all proprietary systems used to command
the ISS. He specifically mentioned products from Microsoft and Red Hat.
This was communicated to General Paul Martin, who then reported everything
to the US House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.
I can't parse what you're saying in response to my point about llvm
being the default choice for all modern use cases of compiler technologies.
Siddhesh
