Compilers in OpenBSD
Ok, that is a pretty compelling argument in favor of non-open source software.<p>I read it to say that GCC is so open source that it cannot converge on a stable release. Further there isn't a non-commercial (aka free) incentive for making it stable, so it doesn't converge. Rather it trundles along from new optimization strategy to the next constantly in a state of minor bugginess. The economics of 'sold' products uses the loss of revenue as the incentive to maintain quality, without that incentive its hard.<p>Google has (had?) a pretty good sized team that did nothing but maintain GCC. I'm sure it cost them easily $1M/year to keep that team going. There is no incentive for them to fund a team like that in a third party such that everyone else benefits from their work. Sure they offer the changes back into the base product, and somewhere else there is another team working for company Y that is taking those, porting them into their effort. In this article from Marc he mentions himself and 5 other developers who are the "compiler people". 5 developers, $120K each, that is .6M/year before you add insurance and office space.<p>And those 5 have their lives made more difficult by the dozen or so folks who are committing in changes that destabilize parts of the code or require side ports.<p>It makes me wonder how many people there are like me who would be willing to pay $100/year for a bespoke C compiler that was supported by a single source and stable.