Re: New GCC Runtime Library Exception: not fit for purpose

[Ian Lance Taylor <iant at google dot com>]

Joern Rennecke <amylaar@spamcop.net> writes:

>> The license says that you have permission to propagate works when
>> certain conditions apply.  It does not say that you do not have
>> permission if certain other conditions apply.  Therefore, if certain
>> conditions apply, you have permission.  It is not necessary for the
>> license to say "oh, and if you stand on your head, you still have
>> permission.'
>
> The permission is specific to a work of Target Code.  Assembly source files
> are not Target Code, hence the permission does not apply.

But assembly source files, and the object code generated by the
assembler, are not covered by the license.  The license does not say
that you only have permission to link target code with independent
modules.  It says that if you link target code with independent
modules, you have permission to do anything you like with the result.

>
>>>> The runtime library license says that you can link libgcc with
>>>> proprietary code, whether that proprietary code was compiled with gcc
>>>> or whether it was compiled with some non-gcc proprietary compiler.
>>>
>>> No, it says that you can only do that if every file of the proprietary code
>>> is written or generated in a high level language, and uses the GCC runtime.
>>
>> The word "only" is your interpolation.  It does not appear in the
>> runtime license.
>
> It is a necessary condition for all the conditions of the exception to
> apply that all of the proprietary code is written or generated in a high
> level language, and uses the GCC runtime.  Only the one exception is
> granted.  Hence, "only" is not an interpolation, it is a corollary.

Again, I disagree.  A grant of permission to do anything is a grant of
permission to do anything, including combining with other code that
was not compiled by gcc and does not use the gcc runtime library.  The
license only restricts code which is either compiled by gcc or uses
the runtime library.

Ian