On: GCC drops its copyright-assignment requirement

[Gaelan]

> proprietary bitcode format Apple never documented and only supports in their proprietary fork

IIRC, the bitcode format isn't proprietary—it's part of the open-source LLVM. The only issue is that it's not a stable format, so they need to use Apple's LLVM version and not an earlier or later open-source one.

[saagarjha → Gaelan]

Note that there is lowercase-b bitcode, which is part of LLVM, and uppercase-B Bitcode, which is Apple’s thing built on top.

[pjmlp → Gaelan]

Apple uses a special version of LLVM bitcode as deployment format for watchOS and iOS.

This variant wasn't and will never be upstreamed.