Apple Plans To Give GCC Changes To FSF

Zippy writes, "According to a message posted to the Darwin-Development mailing list, Apple plans to assign the copyright for its changes to gcc to the Free Software Foundation. Sounds like there are a growing number of folks at the company that get it. Now if they'd just open the hardware ... "

Comments

Apple "got it" from the very beginning...

[SvnLyrBrto]

Apple "got it" from the very beginning. They just lost the way when the suits (john sculley and his cronies) wrested the company from its founders.

In the days of "Steve & Steve" Apple defined "Open Source" before the term was coined, and before anybody had heard of RMS, ESR, or Linus.

I still have all the documentation that came with the Apple ][+ that my dad brought home that day in 1981. Sadly, the Apple ][+ itself fell prey to a Florida thunderstorm some years ago.

That documentation includes:

A complete plan of the motherboard that my dad was later able to use to build his own Apple][ clone.

Commented assembly code for all the ROMs.

Documentation for the Apple Disk ][ 5.25" drive which consisted of a pair of books about 2" thick, including hardware plans for the drive and controller card as detailed as those for the computer itself. (*when was the last time you saw a 2" high stack of manuals for a COMPUTER? much less a 5.25" floppy?!?!??!?*)

Code (not source tho... mostly 6502 assembly)for damn near everything else as well.

The documentation that came with that computer is ASTOUNDING by today's standards. With the rise of Linux, we're only beginning to see the reemergence of such comprehensive docs.

And it is nice to see that Apple is returning to it's old ways.

john

This is something that was long awaited for

[f5426]

As a old-NeXTer now on OSXS, I was hoping for this long ago. I'll try to explain the issue to one unfamiliar with it:

NeXT basically forked the gcc compiler, adding better objc support, extended the objc spec (protocols, distributed obejcts) and the objc compiler (ObjC++, ie: mixing objc and C++ in the same source). The compiler front end also changed (support for frameworks, for instance).

They also changed gdb (adding support for their additions and improving IDE support)

Those modifications were avalaible (well, it is GPL), but the objc runtime was proprietary. Hence, the whole thing was close to useless, as you could not integrate the modifications in mainstream gcc.

Gcc got better and better, so NeXT copied amount of code from gcc/egcs in their forked version of gcc, transorming it in a very strange beast.

But you just can't fight against open-source, so the OSXS compiler is now outdated, have bad C++ support, a lot of quirk, and long outstanding bugs.

Apple is not in the business of make dev tools (but NeXT was). They just have to secure their position by not relying too much on an external vendor (ie: metrowerks), hence MPW. Now metrowerks is owned by motorola, a company with which they have intimate relationship. So assigning gcc mods to FSF is a very logical move:

• They don't spend resources backporting egcs code to get the level of support MacOS developer are used to have
• They don't compete with Metrowerks
• They don't depend on Metrowerks

And, it is very good for the community as it will reduce the differences between Cocoa and GNUstep, which is good for everyone.

Cheers,

--fred