On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 9:51 PM BST, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:26 PM Chris Punches via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> > employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> > behalf of my company I swear".
> >
> > Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
>
> For better or for worse, since the early '90s the majority of people
> who do serious work on GCC have been hired by companies that want to
> do serious work on GCC. After all, it's a win-win: the company gets
> work done, the GCC programmer gets well paid. The effect is that most
> of the major GCC contributors work for a relatively small number of
> companies. There are of course many exceptions, but that is the
> general rule.
>
> Ian
In my view, if people employed by a small number of American companies
succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative of
the free software grassroots community, this is not a win-win. This is
powerful US corporations removing something our community created from
our community's oversight and moving it into a space where it's governed
by representatives of Silicon Valley rather than a membership-based non
profit.
Whilst everyone's contributions to the software should be welcomed, I
don't think you'll find many FSF members celebrating the impact of paid
Corporate engineers on GCC if this sorry state of affairs comes to be.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
