Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

April 12, 2009

Intel says it will contribute additional funds to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).

Over the past five years, Intel has contributed generously to FOSS (free and open source software), but now AMD and others have been more involved with GCC while Intel worked on its own commercial ICC package.

But now it looks tike things could be changing in the industry. Like software, the hardware industry always keeps changing and most observers think it will continue to be be so.

An Intel employee by the name of Melanie Blower has announced herself to the GNU Compiler Collection and requested the FSF-approved legal paperwork that's needed for copyright assignment.

Melanie says "the FSF prefers that a contributor files a copyright assignment for large contributions."

Beyond GCC she also looks to contribute to bin utils, gdb and glibc as an Intel employee. She also has two Intel colleagues that will be joining her in this open-source initiative.

While the two other Intel engineers looking to contribute to GCC have not yet been acknowledged, Melanie Blower appears to have an extensive background in compilers and has written a few going back to the ADA programming language.

In November 2008, one of the pages on her site explain how she was working on a C compiler for Intel network processors.

What exactly will Intel be doing to GCC? Only time will tell, but considering the number of Intel technologies on the horizon, any large contributions should be interesting and appreciated by the Linux and open source community.

Also, and given AMD's more precarious financial health these days, it will be interesting to see if a small war might be brewing between the two chip makers.

Time will tell...

Source: Tech Blog.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

All logos, trade marks or service marks on this website are the property of their respective companies or owners.

ADVERTISERS:
Linux News Today.org is read by over 450,000 people involved in the field of Linux application development, professional Web hosting services, Linux security, Linux Web development, etc. Inquire about our reasonable advertising rates on our news website. One of our advertising representatives will be in touch with you. Simply email us to learn about our ad rates and how we can help drive relevant traffic to your website. Advertising space is limited.