[simias]

Perhaps, but then the distinction between the base system and ports will be lost on them too, and saying that it's merely been removed from the build system doesn't do this news justice IMO, it's more significant than that.

Maybe we could compromise with "FreeBSD has removed GCC from its base system" or something similar.

[amyjess]

> Maybe we could compromise with "FreeBSD has removed GCC from its base system" or something similar.

I think this would make the best headline.

[JdeBP]

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Which would make the headline that is most in accordance with the guidelines here:

"remove GCC 4.2.1 build infrastructure"

[JdeBP]

The thing is that it is not significant news, except perhaps to FreeBSD base developers. It does not signify anything really, certainly not all of the things that people are reading into it even in this very discussion. It's not the death knell of GCC. It's not some sort of war. It has no impact on FreeBSD users, or on people building applications on FreeBSD. It's not even much of a change, considering that the actual concrete change, switching compilers, happened a while ago.

[MaxBarraclough]

> The thing is that it is not significant news, except perhaps to FreeBSD base developers

I think it's significant news, and I have no connection to FreeBSD. It's a significant milestone for Clang, which makes it significant news to C programmers.

> It's not some sort of war.

Well, these compilers are competing with each other. It's a bit like the browser war, such as it is. If there were a respectable BSD-licensed browser, I'm sure the various FreeBSD-on-desktop distros would favour it.

> It's not even much of a change, considering that the actual concrete change, switching compilers, happened a while ago.

As a nail in the coffin moment I'd say it's still significant.