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Re: Ada & JGNAT
- From: kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu (Richard Kenner)
- To: aph at redhat dot com
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Wed, 7 Jul 04 07:57:12 EDT
- Subject: Re: Ada & JGNAT
A worry has always been that you could write a proprietary compiler
and use gcc's back end. You could do this without violating the GPL
by making the two passes of the compiler separate programs. The first
proprietary part would output some kind of intermediate form, the
second part would read that and generate code.
"without violating the GPL" is much too strong. If you write one program
whose output can only be processed by a second program, it's not at all clear
whether or not the combination of the two programs would be covered by the
copyright on both. There are arguments that can be made for either result
and it is not at all clear what a court would rule.
The point is that if you do it as one program you are *definitely*
violating the GPL, so that allowing it to be done as two makes it less
certain that there's a GPL violation.