This is the mail archive of the
gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org
mailing list for the GCC project.
Re: Licensing fixes for libgcc
On Wed, 2003-04-23 at 06:07, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
> Mark Mitchell wrote:
> > On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 14:33, David Turner wrote:
> >
> >>Then please add the exception there too:
> >
> >
> > I have applied this and your other license changes to the GCC 3.3 and
> > GCC 3.4 development branches.
> I wonder. do we really need the special exception for the coverage-collecting
> source? Not having the exception would prevent people distributing a
> coverage-collecting executable under a non-GPL license. It would not affect
> non-coverage-collecting versions of their programs.
>
> Is that too subtle? (I can just see the FUD -- 'use gcov once and your program
> becomes GPL infected')
I understand the philosophy of GCC licensing to be: no output from GCC
should be covered by the GPL, unless some part of the input is. So, I
think the exception is appropriate even for the coverage-collecting
versions, *unless* this is significantly detrimental to the copyleft on
gcc or gcov as a whole.
--
-Dave Turner
GPL Compliance Engineer
Support my work: http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=novalis&p=FSF