Re: Apple, iPhone, and GPLv3 troubles

[Chris Lattner <clattner at apple dot com>]

On Sep 24, 2008, at 7:06 AM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> fix the problem.  My understanding of Apple's current position is that
> they won't take any action until they see the final version of the gcc
> runtime license.

> > Basically, what happened is that Apple created a Tivoized device  
> > called the
> > iPhone,
> > and Apple uses GCC (which is now under GPLv3) and Mac OS X on it.
> > Unfortunately, the iPhone is incompatible with GPLv3, if you want  
> > more see
> > the link I mentioned.
>
> Using gcc to compile your code does not impose any licensing
> requirements on that code.

I'm not speaking for Apple here, and I am not a lawyer.  However, the  
last draft of the runtime library exception clause (which is quite old  
by now) imposed licensing restrictions on the executables generated by  
GCC (due to linked runtime libraries) if you did certain things to the  
compiler.  I'm personally very eager to see the final wording, because  
the draft I saw (again, which is old and has certainly changed) was  
extremely aggressive.

-Chris