Add GPL compatibility check for plugins
Richard Kenner
kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu
Fri Jun 19 13:40:00 GMT 2009
> I was not thrilled with this change. But the FSF was very insistent.
> The way I figured it, plugins already must be GPL-compatible to work
> with GCC. Whether they need to actively declare it or not makes no
> difference, so it didn't really matter to me one way or the other.
Here's how I see the legal issue. There's no difference between a
plugin and linked-in code in terms of whether that code is a
derivative work of GCC: it is if you're using GCC's data structures.
There's no prohibition against *creating* a mix of proprietary code
with code covered by the GPL and, again, this would apply to code
linked in to GCC or within a plugin. The prohibition is against
*distributing* such code. If you have code that's derived from both
GPL code and code with an non-GPL compatible license, there is no
license that allows distribution of that work, so it cannot be
redistributed. So I don't see how you can have a "proprietary plugin"
and I think that reminding people of that fact is a good idea.
(The Linux driver issue isn't quite as clear: it's not as clear to me that
a Linux device driver would be viewed as a derived work of the kernel. But
of course none of this has ever been litigated and I think we should hope
that it never is.)
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