[jcsiracusa]

That's not my argument. It's a cycle. People tried to contribute to gcc, but eventually reached some limits (real or imagined, it doesn't matter) and created something new. egcs was another, similar crisis with a slightly different outcome. This is all part of the process. It's never easy, but progress is made. And we all enjoy nice things between the big upheavals.

[dottrap]

The limits reached are very real. The technical problems are quite fundamental and serious, but possibly fixable. But the political problems make it impossible to solve these technical ones.

See Chandler Carruth's talk "Clang: Defending C++ from Murphy's Million Monkeys". At the beginning between 2:20 and 4:00, he quotes Richard Stallman's response to their proposed changes and demonstrates that using gcc is a non-starter.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/GoingNative-2012...