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Wild – A fast linker for Linux

(github.com)
383 points hkalbasi | 2 comments | 24 Jan 25 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.474s | source
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pzmarzly ◴[24 Jan 25 16:55 UTC] No.42815005[source]▶
Ever since mold relicensed from AGPL to MIT (as part of mold 2.0 release), the worldwide need for making another fast linker has been greatly reduced, so I wasn't expecting a project like this to appear. And definitely wasn't expecting it to already be 2x faster than mold in some cases. Will keep an eye on this project to see how it evolves, best of luck to the author.
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panzi ◴[25 Jan 25 03:05 UTC] No.42819089[source]▶
Why does AGPL Vs MIT matter for a linker?
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1. o11c ◴[25 Jan 25 06:48 UTC] No.42819957[source]▶
Corps want to be able to release and use tools that take away the freedoms that GPL-family licenses provide. Often this results in duplication of effort.

This is not theoretical; it happens quite frequently. For toolchains, in particular I'm aware of how Apple (not that they're unique in this) has "blah blah open source" downloads, but often they do not actually correspond with the binaries. And not just "not fully reproducible but close" but "entirely new and incompatible features".

The ARM64 saga is a notable example, which went on for at least six months (at least Sept 2013 to March 2014). XCode 5 shipped with a closed-source compiler only for all that time.

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2. oguz-ismail ◴[25 Jan 25 07:11 UTC] No.42820078[source]▶
So they donate money instead of code? The project somehow benefits from the switch to MIT?