Symbian releases microkernel

Posted Oct 25, 2009 11:26 UTC (Sun) by dbruce (guest, #57948)
In reply to: Symbian releases microkernel by quotemstr
Parent article: Symbian releases microkernel

He's not saying that building the kernel on a non-GPL compiler is a GPL violation. He's saying that one way to get a compiler other than gcc to build the kernel successfully might be to patch the commercial compiler with GPL code from gcc. (if you are the company with said commercial compiler). That's OK if the patched compiler stays in-house, but it wouldn't be distributable to others unless the whole compiler gets released as GPL code.

Symbian releases microkernel

Posted Oct 25, 2009 12:09 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

This is ridiculously impractical, of course, unless the compiler into
which you're dumping bits of GCC is itself related to GCC: and in that
case, that compiler must also be GPLed, so there's no violation.

(Sure, someone might start a new compiler project under a different
license using an architecture similar enough to GCC that transferring code
from it was practical, but if they do I think they should be checked out
by a good psychiatrist first 'cos they're obviously insane. ;) )