Re: Removal of support for GCC hosted on UWIN

[Joe Buck <jbuck at racerx dot synopsys dot com>]

Mumit writes:

> As someone who worked on x86 UWIN support, I'm obviously interested
> in this issue. As I understand from the messages so far, it is in violation
> of the GPL to *distribute* UWIN linked binaries; but is it a violation if
> a user takes the gcc source distribution and then builds it on a system
> that has UWIN installed?

I don't believe that the user has committed any offense by doing this, but
s/he can't give the binary to others.  But the alternative, it seems,
would then be to put in big warnings to people building on UWIN about
legal restrictions.

> Doesn't x86/alpha Interix support also fall under the same cloud then? It 
> is also an unbundled product, albeit now owned by Microsoft the OS vendor, 
> but still not part of the base OS.

At the risk of sounding like Bill Clinton, it all depends on what you say
an OS is.  On platforms where the compiler and its support library is
unbundled, RMS's attitude has been to treat it as bundled for the purpose
of the GPL (so linking with the language support libraries is OK).  But
clearly it's a fuzzy line.

This thing is arguable; I suppose someone could try to take it to court
and get U/WIN+Windows ruled as being an O/S for the purposes of the
GPL. Anyway, as Mark said, we just work here, for legal matters like this
the FSF decides and we've agreed to go along.

But I guess we should ask RMS about Interix.