Why gcc has a free Objective C frontend
Apple compiles OS X and almost all of its software with gcc. I still find it hard to believe that such a secretive company builds almost all of its software products using gcc, the compiler that anchors the Free Software movement.
Apple’s uses Objective C because NeXT used Objective C. When Steve Jobs was at NeXT, he didn’t want to place their objc gcc frontend under the GPL, but ended up having to. Here is an excerpt of an email from Stallman:
I say this based on discussions I had with our lawyer long ago. The issue first arose when NeXT proposed to distribute a modified GCC in two parts and let the user link them. Jobs asked me whether this was lawful. It seemed to me at the time that it was, following reasoning like what you are using; but since the result was very undesirable for free software, I said I would have to ask the lawyer. What the lawyer said surprised me; he said that judges would consider such schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them. He said a judge would ask whether it is "really" one program, rather than how it is labeled. So I went back to Jobs and said we believed his plan was not allowed by the GPL. The direct result of this is that we now have an Objective C front end. They had wanted to distribute the Objective C parser as a separate proprietary package to link with the GCC back end, but since I didn't agree this was allowed, they made it free.
So that’s why. Via this email thread between Richard Stallman and Bruno Haible about why Common Lisp is under the GPL. Via reddit.
Apple’s move to the GNU Toolchain has been very good for developers (remember MrC and MPW?), but it sure took a long time to get here. Yesterday I remotely debugged an iPhone app using gdb. Spending time in a debugger isn’t usually a very pleasant, but I surprisingly happy when gdb stopped at my first breakpoint…
MPaulo, and 
may 12:12 pm on December 7, 2007 Permalink | Log in to Reply
neat! I was wondering what the google charts api was for!
MPaulo 3:39 pm on December 7, 2007 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great! So it was you who make the first wraper for it!
What I don’t like about Google chart API is the fact axis don’t have nothing to do with values.
Thus, in order for a simple x,y graph to make sense, you have to find the percentage of all your values and then plot them. I mean, if your max value is 150, you must make 150=100% and then calculate all values below it in terms of percentage. Your laber on the x axe will be 150, but your value will be 100%.
Regards,
Jose
Also: it does not work on forums with the [IMG] tag…
It would be usefull for the PHP class to load the url as binary and outputs it as .png, so that it can be recognized everywhere.