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Re: Meta-Level Compilation project / Introspector/ AST access / Licensing question
- From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow at mvista dot com>
- To: Richard Kenner <kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu>
- Cc: mdupont777 at yahoo dot com, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 14:58:30 -0400
- Subject: Re: Meta-Level Compilation project / Introspector/ AST access / Licensing question
- References: <10206211846.AA21084@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu>
On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 02:46:25PM -0400, Richard Kenner wrote:
> There is nothing legally stopping anyone from creating
> a non-free back and front end on the gcc, if you dont
> use linkage, but file format.
>
> Two points: first, you are greatly oversimplifying copyright law when
> you make that statement and second, there *are no* "file formats" to do
> this as part of GCC.
Well, only sort of oversimplifying. No one has ever presented a reason
that distributing a patch which causes GCC to dump its AST in any
format (or distributing a patched GCC and source!) in any way violates
the copyright. RMS has made it clear many times that he does not
approve of such patches and will not accept them in the FSF tree. That
doesn't alter the law at all.
If there is a good reason and no one has bothered to say it, than I
apologize for not being able to see it myself.
--
Daniel Jacobowitz Carnegie Mellon University
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer