>>>>> Andrew Haley writes:
>> I have a different fear: that gcc will become increasing
>> irrelevant, as more and more new programmers learn to work on
>> alternative free compilers instead. That is neutral with regard to
>> freedom, but it will tend to lose the many years of experience
>> which have been put into gcc. In my view, if we can't even get
>> ourselves together to permit something as simple as plugins with an
>> unstable API, then we deserve to lose.
Andrew> OK. Well, that's your view. I don't believe that the presence or
Andrew> absence of plugins will make one iota of differebce to mainstream use
Andrew> of gcc.
The concern is not a first-order effect, but a second-order
effect. GCC will improve more and faster if more developers are involved.
Plug-ins will encourage more research and development of GCC -- more
features and benefits. An improved GCC will attract more users.
In my experience, most users prefer GCC because it is free,
generates code with "good-enough" performance, supports many architectures
and languages, defines a uniform C language, and is distributed with an
"open source-compatible" license. I do not believe that the GPL or the
Free Software Foundation's goals are near the top of the reasons for most
users. If developers and users find that another free compiler satisfies
those requirements better, I suspect developers and users would start
migrating away.
As Ian said, that ultimately would not hurt software freedom; it
might hurt Free Software, and it definitely would hurt the GNU Project and
the Free Software Foundation.
David
