[teddyh]

“Forced to release” does not really describe what happened. It was more like NeXT thought they could take GCC, extend it to compile Objective C and make NeXT’s version of GCC proprietary. When the FSF told them, using lawyers, that NeXT could not, in fact, blatantly violate the GPL, NeXT could have chosen not to release their version and use another compiler for Objective C. But they chose to release their Objective C compiler under the GPL, which was their other option.

This is what happens when you don’t read the license, think that things like copyright doesn’t apply to things you get off the internet, and dig yourself into a hole – your options are limited. But releasing the code as GPL was never their only option, is what I’m saying.