That is true history, in my understanding, but it's not related.
Chris Lattner offered to donate the copyright of LLVM to the FSF at one point: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html
He even wrote some patches: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg01112.html
However, due to Stallman's... idiosyncratic email setup, he missed this: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00...
> I am stunned to see that we had this offer.
> Now, based on hindsight, I wish we had accepted it.
Note this email is in 2015, ten years after the initial one.
The only truth to the story is the missed email.
There is nothing "unmodular" about GCC -- considering that it supports plenty of architectures, operating systems, and languages.
The big difference, which people seem to miss in the context of the GNU project and GNU system, is that modularity is for free software projects. GCC is planty modular, and very easy to extend in any way shape or form .. if you abide by the license!
If you want to be a parasite on a project licensed under the GNU GPL, you will have a rough ride .. that is after all the whole idea of copyleft.
Incredible. Thank you for sharing.
You're welcome! It's a wild story. Sometimes, history happens by accident.
Wow that is wild. Imagine how different things could have been...