> But whereas it is fine that they take advantage of the GPL, because they must publish
As long as they comply. There are lots of people who don't comply and are sued where possible, which is not at all in all cases.
> LLVM vs GCC - Apple effectively built the former ground up because the latter wouldn't budge on the GPL.
And how is that better for the world, duplicating functionality and reinventing the wheel?
And what I've said twice (and now thrice) is that the license choice does not determine the SUCCESS of a project. People are a way more important factor.
As you said, you need that great software and awesome community, but you need it FIRST.
Yes, I'm aware of the monoculture argument. But anyway, the raison d'etre of the GPL is to preserve freedom, not to avoid monocultures, so, even if in this case we might be able to see a good outcome (even though that is still debatable as we have more than one compiler, gcc is big, but far from the only compiler) it's not actually relevant to the question posed in the general case, unless we think the only benefit of the GPL is to avoid monocultures...
As long as they comply. There are lots of people who don't comply and are sued where possible, which is not at all in all cases.
> LLVM vs GCC - Apple effectively built the former ground up because the latter wouldn't budge on the GPL.
And how is that better for the world, duplicating functionality and reinventing the wheel?
And what I've said twice (and now thrice) is that the license choice does not determine the SUCCESS of a project. People are a way more important factor.
As you said, you need that great software and awesome community, but you need it FIRST.