It is a political not a technical decision. Essentially the same like the Linux kernel not encouraging the use of out-of-tree kernel modules. https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html

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surajrmal 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

And it shows how silly the idea is. gcc still sees plenty of forks from vendors who don't upstream, and llvm sees a lot more commercial participation. Unfortunately the Linux kernel equivalent doesn't exist.

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leoc 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's also nakedly hypocritical behaviour on Stallman's part. Hoping (whether in vain or not) that GCC being Too Big to Fork ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6810259 ) will keep people from having access to the AST interface really isn't substantially different from saying "why do you need source code, can't you just disassemble the binary hahaha".

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eikenberry 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wouldn't call Linux's stance silly. A working OS requires drivers for the hardware it will run on and having all the drivers in the kernel is a big reason we are able to use Linux everywhere we can today. Just like if they had used a more permissive license, we wouldn't have the Linux we do today. Compare the hardware supported by Linux vs the BSDs to see why these things are important.

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hedgehog 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There are several open BSDs.

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umanwizard 6 days ago | parent [-]

AFAIK there's no evidence to suggest that permissive vs. copyleft license is the reason for the relative lack of success of the BSDs vs. Linux.

	▲	pjmlp 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		PlayStation and macOS kind of show what happens with upstream. As did all the UNIXes that used to rule before companies started sponsoring Linux kernel development, and were quite happily taking BSD code into them, alongside UNIX System V original code.

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chuckadams 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Linux's position is more like "your out-of-tree code is not our problem". Linus didn't go out of his way to make out-of-tree modules more difficult to write.