> > > Of computer science graduates I have encountered over the last decade, I > > know few who started their journey with gcc and they were all in the > > initial part of the decade. In recent years I don't think I encountered > > any student who works on gcc; many even start with the assumption that > > gcc is in maintenance mode. > > For military focused PhDs, gcc is used. >
Is this a real thing? I spent 15 year in academia (I left a few years ago), and I've never heard of a "military-focused PhD", especially in the context of computer science. I know of security-focused PhDs with intelligence applications, and I can imagine there are people out there working on AI/CV applications with military applications, but I think it's unlikely that those would require modifying a compiler. Applications in HPC might require deep compiler work and have potential military applications supporting AI/CV apps, but I wouldn't consider those "military-focused". I see things pretty much the same way as Siddhesh describes. > - Funding - llvm has a much stronger funding ecosystem than gcc. This > > includes direct funding from the foundation and development workforce > > from various organizations and universities. > > You will not get funding grants in the US if you mention free software, > because the US Department of Commerce does not allow it. > This is wildly inaccurate. Commerce has nothing to do with funding offered by other agencies. The NSF, which provides a significant portion of funding for CS research in the US, has embraced the release of research artifacts (read code) as open-source software. What's even better, the licensing on released work almost doesn't matter to the funding agency, unless they specifically enumerate limits and restrictions in their solicitations. For example, GCC's implementation of C++20 concepts was funded by NSF. I know because I was the postdoc funded to do that work. In fact, you can find NSF acknowledgments in the proposals I worked on. As a professor, I had NSF-funded work related to software-defined networking. All that code was also released open-source, albeit under an Apache or MIT license---I forget which. DoD and DoE almost certainly have restrictions. Corporate funding too, but I have less experience with those. Andrew
