I’m having a debate with a friend and we’re wondering why so many open source projects have decided to go with C instead of C++. Projects such as Apache, GTK, Gnome and more opted for C, but why not C++ since it’s almost the same?
We’re precisely looking for the reasons that would have led those projects (not only those I’ve listed but all C projects) to go with C instead of C++. Topics can be performance, ease of programming, debugging, testing, conception, etc.
C is very portable, much more than C++ was 10 years ago.
Also, C is very entrenched in the Unix tradition. Read more in ‘The Art of Unix Programming‘, about Unix and OO in general, and about specific languages on unix (including C and C++).