This discussion originated on the emacs-devel mailing list, where there was a discussion of adding code to company-mode (text completion) explicitly supporting Clang [1].
It was pointed out [2] that RMS has in the past shown a disinclination to incorporate Clang support into GNU projects because of his perception of its encouragement of proprietary software riding the coattails of open source (but not Free) software.
The discussion then turned [3] to another instance of this: RMS's disapproval of modifications to GCC that would have made the front end more easily separable from the back end, opening the door to a proprietary end-around (or just outright abuse) of the Free license on the GCC frontend.
The article linked above is RMS's response to ESR's comments [4] that such policies have reduced the popularity of GCC compared to Clang.
This discussion originated on the emacs-devel mailing list, where there was a discussion of adding code to company-mode (text completion) explicitly supporting Clang [1].
It was pointed out [2] that RMS has in the past shown a disinclination to incorporate Clang support into GNU projects because of his perception of its encouragement of proprietary software riding the coattails of open source (but not Free) software.
The discussion then turned [3] to another instance of this: RMS's disapproval of modifications to GCC that would have made the front end more easily separable from the back end, opening the door to a proprietary end-around (or just outright abuse) of the Free license on the GCC frontend.
The article linked above is RMS's response to ESR's comments [4] that such policies have reduced the popularity of GCC compared to Clang.
[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg017...
[2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg017...
[3] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg017...
[4] http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00209.html