> Under the guidance of the FSF, GCC has intentionally tangled the front end with the back end. The purpose of this was to make it hard to modularize GCC, because if GCC were modular, then you could write a proprietary component for it (like you can write proprietary Linux modules).
Surely you must be joking... do you have a reference for this? Sure, I sometimes the motives of the FSF but this would be quite outrageous from a software engineering perspective.
Just out of curiosity, couldn't the FSF release GCC under the AGPL or something like that and then modularize it all they want? That was my first thought when reading that message. That way they can promote freedom and still have modular software.
Of course, the AGPL might not have existed in 2000, but I haven't heard about GCC moving to the AGPL since then either.
Surely you must be joking... do you have a reference for this? Sure, I sometimes the motives of the FSF but this would be quite outrageous from a software engineering perspective.