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"GCC intentionally ties the front and back ends into the rest of the code quite closely, to avoid "semi-proprietary" forks."

You've gotta be kidding me...

That's a very suspicious statement.

GCC uses the GPL to avoid "semi-proprietary forks."

Check out this mail and the thread around it: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-02/msg01823.html They've argued this many times on the gcc list.