Re: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias)

On 13 Jun 2002, Martin Wilck wrote:

> > Besides, I don't see how this affects my statement.  Once you have the 
> > compiler working, there is little commercial incentive in improving it.
> 
> Sure. Better optimization may give you +20% performance, at the cost of
> having to port your code. You might as well wait three months and buy
> 20% faster hardware. Unless the compiler has really advanced features 
> (supporting massive parallelism, for example), the number of customers 
> is of course limited. That has nothing to do with gcc being GPL'd. An
> X11-licensed gcc would have the same effect on the market (if it had the
> same quality as gcc).

That makes no sense.  If GCC were X11-licensed, proprietary companies would 
be able to start with the GCC code, modify it for that 20% improvement, and 
sell it to those people who care enough about performance.  Under the GPL, 
they can't do that and be assurred of selling more than a single copy -- 
they're forced instead to build from a different base of code, or not even 
bother.  Since that different codebase would have to match GCC's power to 
have a chance of being accepted as a replacement, that's a tall order.  So 
it's not a surprise if they generally just don't bother.

Having GCC change to the X11 license would significantly affect the market.

Deven