Dumping RTL???

[Marc Espie]

In article <10212050323.AA12005@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> you write:
>    Hmm... gcc is open source... A company like this could ""simply"" alter 
>    gcc to produce complete RTL output and then use their unfree backend 
>    anyways? Given that they release the gcc-patch-source, am I right? Or is 
>    this sceanrio merely academic?
>
>No, doing so would be a clear GPL violation.  If the distributed GCC contained
>a facility to do this dumping, then doing what you propose would *probably*
>be a GPL violation, but but it would be a much weaker case.


How so ?

Front-end/back-ends: separate programs.

You can very well invoke closed source programs from within gcc.
In fact, if you install it on many systems, then your toolchain will
depend upon closed source assembler/linker.

What we're talking about is:
- release a gcc that's patched to dump intermediate representation, with
complete source.
- relase a binary program that's invoked by this gcc, without source.

How is this different ?