> I would dare to guess that Intel or hp has alredy internally ported GCC to
> the IA64..
>
> It's not like they would get away keeping the details a secret...
It's very unlikely that HP will want to make their version of gcc and
not release it because:
1. It will violate GPL.
2. While HP-UX is probably the most troublemaking Unix platfrom that GNU
ever dealt with, HP supported FSF before.
3. HP C++ compiler is the worst thing of its kind in the universe unless
I have missed something even scarier.
Digital already has an agreement (or already contract?) with Intel to
develop Digital Unix for IA64 (so they probably aren't that confident
with "NT will beat everything" attitude they show to the public), and
since Digital Unix is horribly expensive and very un-BSD-ish, Linux
helps Digital to sell low-cost Alpha boxes, so I think, Digital will see
benefit in having Linux ported to IA64, too.
I have no idea what Intel people think. Their recent actions mostly are
directed only to short-term benefit, and I have no idea about their
long-term strategy. While they did a lot of things that can be considered
spitting at free software developers' faces, they are nowhere close to
their (and Digital's) best friend and partner M$.
-- Alex