From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,99ab4bb580fc34cd
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: Mark Eichin <eichin@cygnus.com>
Subject: Re: Q: access to subprogram
Date: 1996/07/07
Message-ID: <xe1enmnmvjn.fsf@maneki-neko.cygnus.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 164216375
sender: eichin@maneki-neko.cygnus.com
references: <4rb9dp$qe6@news1.delphi.com> <Dtxu2p.97F@world.std.com>
organization: Cygnus Support, Eastern USA
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-07-07T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


> remember them all.  that was around the time when Stallman said that
> writing what we now know as the bfd libraries would be "hard").

Thus giving it the name :-)

If I remember correctly, the other big reason is that reading
externally generated rtl or tree structures would make non-Free
frontends possible, and that would be a Bad Thing. This way anything
that takes advantage of the backend needs to also be Free.
					_Mark_ <eichin@cygnus.com>
					Cygnus Support, Eastern USA