Is it REALLY so strange?

Posted Jan 28, 2009 23:47 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: It's the other way around by dlang
Parent article: The new GCC runtime library exemption

If you'll go back decade or so you'll find many, many, MANY packages which required separate developer license and license for redistribution. You'll find countless offers like In addition to dBASE IV version 1.1, Ashton-Tate offers a version 1.1 developer's edition with a royalty-free unlimited RunTime distribution license, the template language source code, two extra LAN keys, and additional applications distribution tools and utilities (emphasis mine). dBASE IV can produce binaries - but you have no right to redistribute them while dBASE IV developer's edition (for extra cost, of course) gives you such a license. Now - I'm not saying such requirements are great, but they certainly are not uncommon.

If you want to say "oh, it's Ok for xBase, but strange for C/C++" then I'll agree: it is stange. Most C/C++ compilers don't include such limitations. But... what's the difference between xBase and C/C++? I mean: from legal viewpoint? After all world is now accustomed to copyleft concept - and it was strange and unusual 20 years ago...

Is it REALLY so strange?

Posted Jan 29, 2009 0:07 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

for DBASE by understanding was that the 'binary' just embedded the entire DBASE interpreter in the resulting binary.

that's not how a compiler is supposed to work.

Is it REALLY so strange?

Posted Jan 29, 2009 0:57 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Hah. It was more extreme even than that, IIRC. The Clipper 'compiler' at
least worked by compiling the program to bytecode and then simply
appending the bytecode to a 180Kb-or-so interpreter-and-database-engine.
(Despite that, the linker was astonishingly slow. I have no clue what it
was doing: given that it was linking the same binary every time, I'm not
even sure why they *needed* a linker.)