This headline grossly misstates the content of the post. Apple wanted a closed source front end that could be linked with the open source gcc internal/backend. At no point would the existing GCC code ever become proprietary under this flawed scheme.
I'm just not wasting time reading anything RMS has written ... Thanks for the memories but:
- You've jumped the shark.
- You're no longer relevant.
- You've alienated so many of your fans.
- You've pushed zealotry to a new level.
- You've turned a conversation into a continuous rant.
And the sad part is that I suspect you'll never look back on what you did accomplish and feel satisfaction. You'll just continue raging against the goals you couldn't reach.
It would have probably been far more annoying to compile to something like that. I've not programmed in Objective C but I believe that it was designed to avoid some of the issues that arose out of C++ being originally a preprocessor like that on top of C. Given that they wanted to do that, having to compile to some kind of IR, then to C, they would have likely had a much harder time getting the code optimized in any reasonable manner. I would also imagine that this would make debugging any part of the compiler that ended up producing incorrect code far more difficult to do.
Keep in mind, Stallman is the douche who wrote this:
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.
I think he's lost the right to offer opinions about Steve or Apple.
