GNU Compiler license

[Robert Dewar]

<<I understand any changes we make to the GNU compiler must remain public, =
but if we integrate the GNU compiler into our IDE, where does the public =
GNU software stop and our private software start?

WindRiver Systems is the leading embedded software company. They have =
the GNU compiler and GNU debugger integrated into their IDE. What type =
of license do they have?
>>

As long as by "integration" you simply mean that your IDE will make calls
to the GNU tools, that's not a problem, and the GPL allows you to do this,
since this is not a deriviative work.

This is not a legal opinion, indeed the only way to get a real legal
opinion would be to ask a jury :-)

But this clearly corresponds to current practice. Wind River for example
does not have a special license to do anything beyond what the GPL allows.

Furthermore, although in the general case the copyright holder of a GPL'ed
program may provide other licensing conditions that are more or less
restrictive to specific people, this is not about to happen when the
copyright holder is FSF, so the GPL is what you get!

But in fact it's all you need, so you don't need to make your IDE
Free Software, though indeed you should consider doing so. Not only
will this benefit your customers, but you could find it of commercial
benefit as well. We (= Ada Core Technologies) have certainly found
that having a Free Software open sourced product has contributed
significantly to a number of competitive wins against proprietary
products, due to the advantages in risk reduction, and avoiding
locking in to sole source maintenance).

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies
(seems the right hat for this particular answer :-)