First FOSS OS? [LWN.net]

First FOSS OS?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 18:04 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: First FOSS OS? by landley
Parent article: The road to freedom in the embedded world

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.

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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.