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Re: Compiling programs licensed under the GPL version 2 with GCC 4.4
- From: Joe Buck <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot COM>
- To: Florian Weimer <fw at deneb dot enyo dot de>
- Cc: "gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org" <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:57:25 -0700
- Subject: Re: Compiling programs licensed under the GPL version 2 with GCC 4.4
- References: <87y6qcfprf.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de>
On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 01:53:40PM -0700, Florian Weimer wrote:
> Kalle Olavi Niemitalo discovered that as an operating system vendor,
> you are not allowed to distribute GPL version 2 programs if they are
> compiled with GCC 4.4. The run-time library is GPL version 3 or
> later, which is incompatible with GPL version 2, so it is not
> permitted to link this with the GPLv2-only program and distribute the
> result.
That's incorrect. The runtime library is GPLv3 or later, but with an
*exception* that permits linking not only with GPLv2 programs, but
also with proprietary programs.
The relevant document is the GCC Runtime Library Exception.