I don't agree with the grandparent post but can offer an interpretation of what they mean. Languages like Go, Rust, Java, etc. are enormous and are designed and managed by a committee. Sometimes, they go in a direction that you might not like. For example, many people were pissed off by the compatibility break between Python 2 and 3. If you find yourself disagreeing with the designers' decisions, you have very little recourse but to stick with an old version of the language/tooling while the rest of the world moves forward, because you are in no position to understand and maintain a huge language implementation codebase. The grandparent is implying that C is so simple that if you disagree with the direction of the official C language and major compiler vendors, you can simply write fork the language and reasonably your own compiler. But of course, I would say that you have the freedom to reinvent the same bugs over and over again, that the committee was trying to proactively solve for you.