Benchmarks

[Joe Buck]

I wrote:
> > So, if you wrote "only SPEC licensees can independently verify the
> > results" you would have been more accurate.  Certainly it's better for GCC
> > if *anyone* who has access to the right hardware can do the verification.

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 09:09:57PM +0200, Toon Moene wrote:
> Note that "we" supplied one of SPEC's integer benchmarks (176.gcc) - so 
> we're entitled to the SPEC benchmark suite.

Unfortunately there are problems with accepting SPEC's offer.  The FSF is
the legal owner of GCC, therefore the offer of free licenses goes to the
FSF.  But the FSF would then have to agree to honor the conditions on the
license, including restricting access to the code, and they can't do that:
it goes right back to RMS starting the free software movement because he
refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

> Now it might take some (negotiation) time with SPEC as to how, exectly, 
> the GCC community gets access to this benchmark suite (who the "we" are 
> in the above), but surely, it should be possible to reason this out.

Perhaps you can figure out some way of getting RMS to accept the offer.
Good luck, you'll need it.