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RE: Linkage of GPLed GCC to Closed Source via XML or Perl
- From: Daniel Berlin <dan at dberlin dot org>
- To: Robert Dewar <dewar at gnat dot com>
- Cc: Dautrevaux at microprocess dot com, <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot com>, <mdupont777 at yahoo dot com>, <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 00:56:38 -0500 (EST)
- Subject: RE: Linkage of GPLed GCC to Closed Source via XML or Perl
On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Robert Dewar wrote:
> <<More seriously if someone creates a new GCC back-end to output something
> that TODAY is not assembly language, then fine: the back-end is GPLed and
> the resulting output can be used freely. In fact nothing proves that someday
> one will not see a processor that you will directly program in XML, so that
> XML would then be assembly language :-)
> >>
>
> Please do not state dubious opinions as though they are legal fact. Remember
> that what the GPL means can only ultimately be ascertained by litigation, and
> many of the areas that people seem to think are black and white are quite
> gray in practice.
It's worse than that, as you know. You generally, in practice, end up with
it black
and white in some circuits, but grey in another, and just to be
different, purple in a third.
Then 15 years later, the supreme court decides they were all wrong, and
it's really brown, and the cycle begins anew.
--Dan