[wahern]

That's the commonly accepted narrative about LLVM, but in retrospect it's even more clear that it was always about the GPL and, in particular, GPL3. Fast forward to today and LLVM's interfaces are no more stable than GCC's, and GCC is the only project with useable dynamically pluggable modules.

RMS was wrong to have pushed back on module support for so long, but it was irrelevant. Apple wanted to be in the driver's seat, and Apple's legal department was and remains violently opposed to GPL3. And it turns out that when you're in the driver's seat you don't really need stable interfaces and you definitely don't need modules.

The competition has been good, though. I like using both compilers.