Re: GCC Runtime Licensing

[David Chisnall]

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