Sounds like co-distribution is perfectly legal [LWN.net]

Sounds like co-distribution is perfectly legal

Posted Nov 11, 2005 13:12 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
In reply to: Sounds like co-distribution is perfectly legal by khim
Parent article: Debian and Nexenta collide

There sure were. DG-UX (Data General) used gcc as their stock compiler. The propietary (I believe source wasn't available) Pro toolset from Cygnus was built around gcc, gdb, binutils, etc. Not just some "shipping with" there, without those tools the rest made no sense at all.

Besides, this is more than a bit strange, all around: DEC provided a tape with "extraofficial software" with their systems, Sun later shipped a CD with such stuff. I'm sure other Unix vendors did likewise. There are vendor sites giving GPLed stuff compiled and packed for their systems (including whatever parts of the libraries and such this requires). And now, when the same thing is being done with an OS shipped in source form, under a somewhat free license (much freer that original Solaris or Ultrix, in any case),it is bad?

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Sounds like co-distribution is perfectly legal

Posted Nov 13, 2005 20:28 UTC (Sun) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

The same thing with NextStep. GCC was the system compiler. They modified it to support ObjectiveC, and were forced to release the source code to the ObjectiveC front end, but not for the whole operating system.