GPL v3 license of GNU Fortran

[FX]

Hi Walt, hi gfortranners,

For the record, a copy of a post I sent to comp.lang.fortran, after a chance reading of the The Fortran Tools documentation.
I thought it might be useful to bring it to this list, where perhaps others can correct me if my understanding of the license is wrong.

Best regards,
FX


--------

Hi Walt,

> gfortran works fine with Eclipse and with Code::Blocks, even on
> Windows. To see how all this fits together, you can look at
> www.fortran.com/Fortran_Tools_52.pdf.

I appreciate that you package and sell gfortran in a nice environment for
Windows users. 

Regarding the info on "GNU Fortran source" in your documentation:

>   1.12.2 Gfortran
>   The source files for Gfortran may be found at
>   http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortranBinaries.

The requirements for providing source code, in the GPL v3 license, are 
the following (quoting from the FSF FAQ):

  - provide clear instructions people can follow to obtain the source
  - supply the source code that corresponds to the binary, from which
    users can rebuild the same binary

I'm afraid just giving a generic link to the gcc/gfortran website isn't 
enough. The license requires you to point to the specific version of 
sources (complete) from which the binary was built. Including all 
possible modifications (it's rare to distribute directly the FSF version;
most vendors include some of their own patches).

As far as I can tell, this also applies to the libraries built into 
gcc/gfortran (including GMP, MPFR, MPC, possibly ISL, etc.).

-- 
FX