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Re: Using of parse tree externally
- To: aoliva at redhat dot com, jbuck at racerx dot synopsys dot com
- Subject: Re: Using of parse tree externally
- From: dewar at gnat dot com (Robert Dewar)
- Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 21:43:11 -0400 (EDT)
- Cc: anguiano at cs dot ucdavis dot edu, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
<<Err... Wouldn't the provision of GCC as an API require programs
linked with it to be GPLed, just like any other library does? The
actual problem, AFAIK, is to make GCC capable of spitting out its
internal state and reading it back later, because then it would be
possible to write optimizers that *wouldn't* be linked with GCC,
avoiding the GNU GPL requirement.
>>
The last sentence represents a legal opinion that is contentions. The
question of whether writing things out as files makes two programs
independent is not clear at all. See for example my testimony in the
Intergraph vs Bentley Systems trial in Philadelphia last year. This
case settled just before the judge gave an opinion, so we won't know
if our opinion would have prevailed, but it is at least arguable (our
basic position was that two programs are independent only if each
can function usefully without the other).