Clang - what is the story?

[RW]

On Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:11:18 +1000
Da Rock wrote:

> 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.

It is that. I don't know the details, but GPLv3 is sufficiently more
viral that recent gcc versions can't be used as the base system
compiler. We're currently stuck with a version from 2007.