Re: Fix gcc_update for libcpp (Was: Re: Mainline bootstrap failure while running aclocal in libcpp)

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

On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 01:57:22PM -0400, Robert Dewar wrote:
> Joe Buck wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 07:22:49PM +0200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> > 
> >>On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> >>
> >>>I'd rather have the right version picked up by default.  Heck, not
> >>>shipping the gettext.m4 needed to rebuild aclocal.m4 could even be
> >>>construed as a violation of the GNU GPL, since we're shipping a
> >>>generated file without its sources.
> >>
> >>You don't need to ship sources, by default, to comply with the GNU GPL.
> >>You only need to ship sources upon request.
> > 
> > 
> > Not quite right: you must include a written offer, good for three years,
> > telling people exactly how to obtain the sources if you do not provide
> > them at the very beginning.  If this written offer is not included with
> > the binaries, you've violated the GPL right there.
> 
> Note that as always the notion of "violating the GPL" is bogus. The
> GPS is a license to copy, if you don't meet the terms of the license,
> then you have a potential copyright violation. Potential, because
> the validity of the copyright still has to be established.

You're being pedantic, Robert.  You've just stated what I said in a more
long-winded way.  Of course the GPL is copyright-based, and grants
additional permissions to copy, so that if the conditions of the GPL are
not met, copyright is violated (except for fair use, and I really don't
want to start a discussion about the meaning of fair use).  "violated the
GPL" is shorthand which should be good enough for the current purpose.
And your last sentence is just a red herring, as I can't imagine anyone
successfully contesting the copyright on the .m4 files in question, given
that we can trace the authors, we have assignments, employer disclaimers,
and so forth.

This is not gnu.misc.discuss; the issue came up because we have a
specific case.  We do not need to have a rambling discussion on the more
general case.

To get this thing back on topic, if there are any cases where the GCC
project is including a generated file from some other project and not the
original file, let's just fix that, rather than playing lawyer and arguing
about whether it's OK.  It's a lot simpler, adding three-year offers is
not something we should bother with.