[cfe-dev] Query: Is clang an "Apple product"?

[Sean Silva]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Renato Golin <renato.golin at linaro.org>
wrote:

> On 2 October 2014 18:46, Robinson, Paul
> <Paul_Robinson at playstation.sony.com> wrote:
> > Apple delivers a version of clang (as part of Xcode?) and it's not
> unheard
> > of for a vendor to include proprietary changes (I don't know whether
> Apple
> > does this).  In that sense the clang-that-Apple-delivers could be
> reasonably
> > considered an "Apple product."
>
> In that sense, Sony, ARM and others also release LLVM based compilers.
>
> Every time I heard the phrase "LLVM is an Apple product" was in a
> pejorative way to diminish the community value, mainly due to the
> license being more "corporate friendly" than GPLv3.
>

The funny thing is that LLVM is sort of a "de facto copyleft" due to the
fast development pace and lack of compatibility: every patch that isn't in
the open source repo becomes a liability, eventually resulting in merge
pain. Unlike the GPL though, if you really need it, you have the
flexibility to keep it out-of-tree; but at a (not to be underestimated)
cost in developer resources.

-- Sean Silva


>
> Ideals and licenses apart, LLVM is an Apple/Google product as much as
> GCC is a RedHat product, Linux is a RedHat/Intel product, etc, i.e.
> not at all.
>
> cheers,
> --renato
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