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Re: GCC Runtime Licensing


From: David Chisnall
Subject: Re: GCC Runtime Licensing
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 11:39:37 +0100

On 1 Apr 2009, at 06:24, David Ayers wrote:

Indeed I believe this concern has just been addressed:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2009-04/msg00005.html

Thanks for the clarification.

As I read it, this means that the exemption only applies to code compiled with GCC. This is bringing libgcc (and GNU libc?) into line with the existing exemption on GNU libobjc, which is exactly the opposite of what I wanted. This means that it is not possible, for example, to compile any GPLv2 program with any other compiler that uses the GNU runtime libraries.

In fact, this entire exemption is potentially problematic, because it explicitly excludes preprocessors, which means that when GCC runs the preprocessor and copies inline functions from the libobjc headers into programs the exemption does not apply. This makes it impossible to use recent versions of GCC to compile GNUstep, since GPLv3 is incompatible with LGPLv2.

The exemption I would like to see is:

- Use of the headers is allowed for any purpose (you can't copyright an interface, so this only applies to the very small number of inline functions and macros defined in the headers).

- Linking is permitted.

This is the old exemption from libgcc:

In addition to the permissions in the GNU General Public License, the Free Software Foundation gives you unlimited permission to link the compiled version of this file into combinations with other programs, and to distribute those combinations without any restriction coming from the use of this file. (The General Public License restrictions do apply in other respects; for example, they cover modification of the file, and distribution when not linked into a combine executable.

This would be absolutely perfect for libobjc. I don't understand what they hope to gain by changing it, other than to force us to stop using GNU libobjc.

David




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