On Tue, 2013-02-19 at 13:54 -0500, Mikhail T. wrote: > > Licensing prevents us from updating gcc in the base. > Licensing? Could you elaborate, which aspect of licensing you have in > mind?
Versions of gcc after the 4.2.1 version we use are licensed under GPLv3. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't understand all the fine details of why GPLv3 is bad for the freebsd project, but I accept the analysis and decisions the project made on that subject some time ago. As you might imagine, switching to a new compiler isn't something you decide to do this afternoon and finish up tomorrow with a big checkin. It takes many months of testing and iteratively fixing bugs... bugs found in the new compiler, and bugs the new compiler exposes in the existing source base. I think we've been able to cherry-pick a few specific fixes from gcc upstream that weren't encumbered by GPLv3, but for the most part I think nobody is actively maintaining the GPLv2 code anymore. -- Ian _______________________________________________ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
