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by dalke 4538 days ago
As one of the commenters points out, Intel continues to develop a proprietary compiler. I think that's a better example than Apple for this case.

In general, the world is more than just C/C++. IBM dominates the enterprise COBOL market. (See http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/most-wanted-the-elusive... .) And there are several commercial Fortran compilers besides Intel, including that of NAG (Numerical Algorithms Group) and PGI (The Portland Group).
2 comments
pdw 4538 days ago
Proprietary C compilers are also alive and well in the embedded world.
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frezik 4538 days ago
But a lot of them use GCC, too. Atmel, for example.
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dded 4538 days ago
I'm not part of the Ada world, so I don't actually know, but I thought the important Ada compiler(s) were also proprietary.
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jordigh 4538 days ago
Ada is one of the poster children for early GPL success:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNAT#History

They also sell GPL exceptions, which I think is a good thing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7027926

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