Re: GCC 3.4.0 build failed on interix3

[Joe Buck <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot COM>]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 02:40:10PM -0700, Tristan Fillmore wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 12:22, Rupert Wood wrote:
> > if you dig around the SFU install you'll find Microsoft's own
> > patches....

> > There's a README with the patches that says they are all be assigned to the
> > FSF but they haven't yet found their way in to the FSF GCC tree; hopefully
> > we can convince the right people to get these into 3.5 at least. I haven't
> > had time to help myself :-/

Oops, I hear the sound of a can of worms being opened.

Is there a legal issue with Interix support?  I know that UWIN support was
pulled because if you build from source, the resulting binary would have
proprietary code in it that is not part of the Windows operating system.

Depending on the architecture of Interix, maybe it's OK and maybe it
isn't.  We might have to check with the FSF.  But since the Interix web
site calls Interix "Add-on Tools and Services for Microsoft Windows
Services for Unix", it might be a problem if any proprietary library not
part of Windows or the compile gets linked in.  But if the only pieces
included are part of "Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX" then maybe
those count as part of the OS.

The rule settled on by the FSF and the SC at the time of the UWIN dispute
is that we wouldn't accept any patch that would cause the output of "make
bootstrap" to be illegal to distribute.