On: Make LLVM Fast Again

[magicalhippo]

> AFAIK the GPL isn't really relevant unless you're modifying and redistributing GCC itself.

A lot of interesting LLVM use-cases are all about that, adding custom frontends or backends used in software that is distributed. Some random examples:

https://www.elementscompiler.com/elements/island/

https://ispc.github.io/

https://www.khronos.org/spir/

[pjmlp → magicalhippo]

Just like GCC has had Cobol, Ada, Fortran, Modula-2, Pascal, Java, Go and plenty of other ones throughout the years.

[magicalhippo → pjmlp]

And how many of those were/are commercial or similar? The point is that GCC requires you to adhere to the GPL, which may not be desirable.

The Island platform that I linked to is one such commercial example, made and sold by RemObjects[1]. OpenCL support in graphics drivers is another example.

[1]: https://www.remobjects.com/

[the_why_of_y → magicalhippo]

GCC's C, C++ and Fortran frontends are commercial products of at least Red Hat and SuSE, for example see https://developers.redhat.com/products/developertoolset/over... and https://suse.com/c/suse-linux-essentials-where-are-the-compi...

GCC's Go frontend is still commercially supported as part of RHEL7 but was replaced by the more popular Go implementation in later versions.

GCC's Java frontend used to be commercially supported in the days before OpenJDK.

[pjmlp → magicalhippo]

GNATPro is commercial, which is GNAT plus some extra stuff and commercial support from AdaCore.

Modula-3 frontend was commercial, by Elego Software Solutions.

Then naturally Objective-C and Objective-C++ frontends used on NeXTSTEP and OpenSTEP.