Topics from the LLVM microconference

> Their companies see LLVM as a way to monetize open-source by incorporating it into their proprietary software, thus they fund their work

As long as said companies contribute work back to LLVM proper, we're all better off -- but from an end-user's perspective, whether said proprietary software is built on top of LLVM or not, it's still proprietary software. The end-user is still dependent on the vendor to fix problems or keep it updated with whatever upstream LLVM does.

> However, some people pushing for LLVM are anti-copyleft, anti-GNU, anti-FSF and disdain Richard Stallman. These people have seen an opening to attack GNU/FSF and they are going for the jugular.

Unfortunately, the biggest backers of LLVM fall fall under this "anything-but-GNU" umbrella. In particular, a certain Fruit company based in Cupertino...

There's also a third group -- Folks who develop other free/copyleft software, but use LLVM due to some technical superiority over GCC making it more suitable for what they are trying to do. In particular, LLVM has better modularity and is much easier to embed into other software. Mesa is an example of Free Software that uses LLVM for things that GCC is technically incapable of doing.