From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 18782 invoked by alias); 16 Nov 2007 18:41:58 -0000 Received: (qmail 18774 invoked by uid 22791); 16 Nov 2007 18:41:57 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from us01smtp1.synopsys.com (HELO boden.synopsys.com) (198.182.44.79) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:41:55 +0000 Received: from crone.synopsys.com (crone.synopsys.com [146.225.7.23]) by boden.synopsys.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 70AF6E21D; Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:41:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from piper.synopsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by crone.synopsys.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA01644; Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:40:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from piper.synopsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by piper.synopsys.com (8.12.11/8.12.3) with ESMTP id lAGIfqjD011743; Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:41:52 -0800 Received: (from jbuck@localhost) by piper.synopsys.com (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id lAGIfluR011738; Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:41:47 -0800 Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:58:00 -0000 From: Joe Buck To: Gerald.Williams@infineon.com Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Progress on GCC plugins ? Message-ID: <20071116184147.GL22036@synopsys.com> References: <20071116172656.GJ22036@synopsys.com> <01E1C678991B8241B3F48A9E7C3975424A278F@mucse301.eu.infineon.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <01E1C678991B8241B3F48A9E7C3975424A278F@mucse301.eu.infineon.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2007-11/txt/msg00465.txt.bz2 On Fri, Nov 16, 2007 at 07:29:12PM +0100, Gerald.Williams@infineon.com wrote: > I hope we aren't thinking about keeping things difficult for > everybody simply because everybody includes some people who > may want to take advantage of GCC in a proprietary way. In > the long term, this only benefits the folks you'd be trying > to exclude. RMS believes that people who extend GCC, hoping to take their extensions proprietary, and then finding that they can't, will then just decide to contribute the code, if it is useful, since otherwise they can't distribute and have to support it by themselves forever, or else they have to risk legal problems. And he has some evidence that this sometimes happens (C++, Objective-C, many contributed back ends). So the intent isn't to prevent certain people from using it, but to have those people contribute the changes back even if that isn't their preference. Now that's fine as far as it goes, but when it becomes a defense of an opaque, non-extendable architecture we have a problem.