Re: VB

[dewar at gnat dot com]

<<VB directly uses all the little icons and glyphs that make MS Windows
95/98/2000/NT recognizable.  Every pixel of that graphics library, right down
to the font generators, is copyright to MS.  I am also pretty certain that
this is partly due to the tight interaction between Windows as an operating
system, and the implementation of VB.  Microsoft might at some point give
something away to somebody, but free copyright permissions for use in the GNU
environment will never happen.
>>

But surely a GCC based VB would simply use these icons.

<<The next problem that gets ugly is the GPL.  In order to make a VB compiler
work, it would have to include linkages to MS owned routines and libraries.
Those linkages would have to happen *before* any user could start execution.
That is a direct violation of the GPL.  Mr. Stallman and the FSF would hire
lawyers to enfore the restrictions, and they should..
>>

No, it would not be a violation of the GPL for a VB program to require
such linkages to run. What would be a violation is to distribute linked
code, but you could distribute source programs without running afoul.

Now this is a little bit like the case that was discussed with respect
to a Windows emulation package earlier. There is no GPL violation per
se in creating, distributing, and using a GCC based VB compiler that
links with the MS stuff (and would presumably require that you acquire
a legal copy of Microsoft VB to use), but

a) it is a lot less attractive to have a GCC based VB if you have to
buy Microsoft VB to run it.

b) The situation encourages GPL violations, in the sense that it would
be all too easy for people to distribute programs in violation of the
GPL. For this reason, it is quite likely that the FSF GCC would not
want to include this front end, or any special stuff for enabling use
of this front end, but that is a policy call, not something that is
dictated by the GPL itself.

Now one thing that is NOT clear from what you say is whether the
"graphics library" is indeed part of VB itself. Anything that is
part of the standard Windows distribution is of course valid in
a GPL'ed program under the special exception for standard operating
system stuff. I have assumed in my reply above that there is VB
specific stuff that would be needed that

a) comes only with VB
b) is copyrighted by Microsoft, and contains protectable expression
c) there is no way of providing substitute components

But if there are no components for which all of a) b) and c) are true
then the situation is more hopeful.

VB is one of the most widely used programming languages, so it would be
nice to support, *especially* if it could run on non-microsoft platforms.