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From: glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: GCC is 25 years old today
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:33:47 +0000 (UTC)
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BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> wrote:

(snip)

> I vaguely remember a time when compilers tended to cost money, and
> weren't exactly cheap.

The design software for both Xilinx and Altera FPGAs, which among
other things includes VHDL and Verilog parsers, is now free, except
for the high-end devices. (Presumably like in the early days of
computing, supported by selling hardware.)

It wasn't always that way, and should be pretty much unrelated
to FSF and GCC.

For that matter, consider web browsers as HTML interpreters.

-- glen