First FOSS OS? [LWN.net]

First FOSS OS?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 17:30 UTC (Thu) by landley (guest, #6789)
In reply to: First FOSS OS? by JoeBuck
Parent article: The road to freedom in the embedded world

> Good luck doing development without RMS's compiler.

Fabrice Bellard's Tiny C Compiler (http://tinyc.org) is somewhat stalled
since all his time's going into qemu these days, but last I checked the
wikipedia entry for it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_C_Compiler)
still linked to the mercurial repository of my personal fork of the
project (http://landley.net/hg/tinycc) as a way to stay up to date. I
should probably also update
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/tcc/tccboot.html when I get the time...

So yeah, I've got that covered. It's still just on my todo list because
I can still get GCC under GPLv2, but when that goes GPLv3 only I've got a
replacement waiting.

I've used Turbo/Borland C, I've used Watcom's x86->PPC cross compiler,
I've used IBM's VisualAge, I've used Sun's C compiler on Solaris, and
probably a few others I'm not remembering at the moment. Nobody ever
called OS/2 Watcom-OS/2, or called WWIV Turbo/WWIV. Using that as
justification for the GNU/Linux/Dammit crusade is deeply silly. Even
Microsoft doesn't claim to own programs built with Visual C or Quick C
(most of the time).

Rob

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First FOSS OS?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 18:04 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

GNU doesn't claim ownership of programs built with GCC, either.

Of course GCC will never go GPLv3 only: that would have catastrophic consequences, as no non-GPLv3ed software would be buildable with such a GCC (which is obviously deleterious). The runtime libraries will remain under various flavours of GPL+exception (the precise nature of the exception varying depending on the nature of the language so as to ensure that programs compiled with GCC are not encumbered: the GNAT runtime, with its cross-unit inlining, needs different exceptions from libstdc++ needs, which needs different exceptions to libgcc or libjava...)

The *compiler* will probably go GPLv3 (except for the docs *sigh*), but GCC is more than just a compiler.

First FOSS OS?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 18:28 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

GCC will go GPLv3 only, but all the support libraries GCC relies on have a "special exception" clause that essentially lets you build proprietary code with gcc.

First FOSS OS?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 21:09 UTC (Thu) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]

If gcc actually requires this exception than any gplv3 word processor
will require a similar exception to avoid the word processing documents
you save out from being considered derived works of the word processor,
and that's deeply silly.

They came up with lgpl for glibc because significant chunks of the
library wind up copied verbatim into the resulting program (especially
when statically linked), so you can make a strong case that it IS a
derived work. But translation software shouldn't slap an extra layer of
copyright on someone's document when it turns french into spanish.
There's no additional creative element embodied in the resulting work.

Having the exception to make you feel better is one thing, but compiling
a program with Microsoft's proprietary compilerm, or Sun's Java compiler,
doesn't make the result owned by Microsoft either. (The runtime
libraries are another matter.)

Rob

First FOSS OS?

Posted Mar 23, 2007 14:19 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Word processors don't textually copy parts of the word processor into
documents you save with it.

GCC *does* textually copy parts of itself (libgcc, libstdc++ headers,
<stddef.h>...) into programs built with it (some of these technically get
copied by the linker, but it's GCC that induces the linker into doing that
copying).

Microsoft *do* claim rights over programs you build with their C compiler,
again because of the language runtime (mostly? they may have other
patent-related reasoning which I'm not really interested in since it
doesn't apply to anything remotely free).

First FOSS OS?

Posted Mar 23, 2007 14:16 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I was trying to emphasise that the *exceptions* would remain, and
GPL+exception != GPL.