From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 21 12:54:16 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 71B40106566C for ; Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:54:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au) Received: from mail.unitedinsong.com.au (mail.unitedinsong.com.au [150.101.178.33]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2DD5E8FC13 for ; Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:54:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: from laptop1.herveybayaustralia.com.au (laptop1.herveybayaustralia.com.au [192.168.0.179]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.unitedinsong.com.au (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 788435C29 for ; Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:27:44 +1000 (EST) Message-ID: <4F1AAB66.5070100@herveybayaustralia.com.au> Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:11:18 +1000 From: Da Rock User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20111109 Thunderbird/7.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Clang - what is the story? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:54:16 -0000 I've been seeing a lot of hoorays and pats on the back and a general feeling satisfaction in being able to use clang to compile FreeBSD and ports. The only reason I can see from searching is a need to get away from gcc (which is tried and tested since the beginning of time) which is now apparently GPLv3. Can someone offer some clarity as to the importance of this? I'm guessing the that stepping away from GPL is generally a good thing, especially if there is something similar with similar license structure to BSD; I just can't understand the rush of it. Even under GPL anything built using gcc can be licensed as you like, so I doubt it could be that. I'm not skeptical, just curious- trying to get my head around some of the dev side of things :)