Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 18:25:39 -0700 (MST) From: Softweyr LLC <softweyr@xmission.com> To: cmakin@nla.gov.au (Carl Makin) Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GPL Licence Query Message-ID: <199702190125.SAA23893@xmission.xmission.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95.970219101956.10307A-100000@gadget.nla.gov.au> from "Carl Makin" at Feb 19, 97 10:52:04 am
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> A friend and I have been reading the GNU GPL licence and the library
> licence and, of course, we don't understand them. (We were doing this
> seperate the GPL discussion going on)
>
> Our reading of the licence indicates that all object code produced by
> GNU C, even if you don't use any GNU libraries, would be infected with the
> GPL. Obviously the FreeBSD team has a different interpretation. Can
> someone explain what that interpretation is?
No, this is not true. Only code that explicityly has the GPL attached
to it is covered by the GPL. GNU libraries are typically covered by
the GLPL, which was written for libraries. The one exception in all
of this is that every program written with GCC (on UNIX at least)
contains routines from libgcc1 (and perhaps libgcc2). For this reason,
the source code to libgcc1 explicitly extends the GLPL in the following
manner:
% 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 with other programs, and to distribute
% those programs 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 another program.)
This allows you to distribute programs compiled with GCC at will, as long
as no other GNU library code is compiled into the program.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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