On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 09:13:19AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

[...]

> > Since a few years ago Gcc improved after painfully breaking old
> > constraints, pressured by the new competitor, but I'm afraid that it
> > will be too little, too late. Linux compiles with Clang, and that's a
> > very worrying signal for Gcc, because if certain distributions migrate
> > to Clang, Gcc development will be over.
> 
> That rings a bell: it's what I heard 20 years ago about XEmacs vs GNU
> Emacs when I talked (in person) to its main developers.  The rest is
> history.

I think it is still relevant. Big corps have learnt to ride the waves
since then. Watch Microsoft "being friendly" to "open source" to the
tune of $ 7 billion (if I remember correctly) they shelled out for
Github (they didn't out of the goodness and warmth of their hearts:
I, at least, don't believe in fairy tales). Watch Google (before that)
editing out the "do no evil" while nobody seemed to be looking.

They still want some kind of user [1] control, but they know they can't
be as ham-fisted as they used to be in the '8ies and '90ies. The
question is wheter to agree or disagree with this "new" user control
patterns. Personally I don't, but I don't yet know the FSF's position on
that.

Cheers

[1] how is the return on investment to be secured, otherwise?

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