license information for gcc

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Hashimoto Yuya <hill_climb@hotmail.com> writes:

> Thank you very much for your reply.
>  
>> To the best of my knowledge, current versions are GPL3 and earlier
>> ones GPL2. Perhaps really early version had other licenses. The
>> libraries are released under LGPL, so you can use gcc to build closed
>> source applications.
>  
> Does this mean that it's possible to use gcc to build closed source 
> applications, regardless of the version of gcc?

Yes.

> The reason why I asked about license information is that I want to use gcc 
> to build application whose source I want to keep closed, and I thought that 
> gcc was protected under different kind of license depending on its version. 
> For instance, 3.x is protected under LGPL, and 4.x is protected under GPL, 
> etc.

That is incorrect.  gcc has always been under the plain GPL.  It has
always been possible to use gcc to build proprietary applications.

Of course gcc is only a compiler, and is only one part of what you need
to build an application.  glibc, for example, is under the LGPL.

Ian