🚀 go-pugleaf

Joe Buck writes:

   The question was about public domain compilers; 

That's the subject line. My response was for a *different* statement by
M. Castle, not to Chip's original query. lcc is a fast, readable ansi-C
front end. It also happens to be free, but not PD.

						as your posting makes
   clear, LCC isn't even freely distributable.

No, the lcc front end is freely distributable, in any sense of the term
free as understood by the regular readers of this newsgroup.

					...  As for your claim that
   LCC optimizes as well as or better than GCC, this may be true...

I remember seeing a sigplan paper. Feel free to ask Chris Fraser if you
are that interested.

   And take a look at this:

[part about licensing the code generators elided]

   Even if a university executes a license, the most interesting part of
   the compiler for those who would port to new platforms is not available.

That's just one set of back-ends. Having looked at PO some years ago, I
suspect that it wouldn't be too difficult to make it work with LCC, and 
other back-ends may be in the works. In other words, a freer C compiler
as an alternative to GCC is not as far away as as most people may think.

oz
---
If you can't understand it, you certainly  |  electric: oz@sis.yorku.ca
can't trust it.           -- Doug McIlroy  |  ph: [416] 736 2100 x33976