[haiku] Re: licensing concerns
- From: Ryan Leavengood <leavengood@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:01:33 -0400
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Nicholas
Blachford<nicholas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> There's a thread about licensing in the forums here about licensing concerns
> with new versions of gcc:
>
> http://www.haiku-os.org/community/forum/mit_vs_gcc43_license_crash
>
> It's written off as FUD but it's not, this is a very real concern for
> companies. Companies can live with gpl v2 but gpl v3 is avoided like the
> plague. That's not that difficult, but it sees something has changed in gcc
> that's made things a whole lot more complex.
It mostly sounds like FUD to me.
> I don't know the exact details but newer versions of gcc have changed to gpl
> v3, this in itself is not a problem but as I understand it the c lib may
> also have changed license. If so, as soon as you link to it your app
> becomes gpl v3.
I just don't think this can happen. I'd love to see it held up in a
court of law where simply linking against a library causes code to be
licensed in another way. Linking to a library does not involve source
code in any way, so I just don't see how copyright law applies (the
GPL is enforced through copyright law.) It just defies all logic and
copyright law.
> As I said, I don't know the exact details, but you might want to check
> exactly what gets linked against what when you do a build, and exactly what
> licenses are in use.
This is certainly a good idea in general, but I wouldn't get too
wide-eyed and short-of-breath yet over this GCC licensing. The GCC
people would have to be nuts to totally kill their use in any
commercial code, which is essentially what you guys are saying. If the
GPLv3 really does this, Stallman and his crew are a bunch of maniacs.
> Could this end up with a fort in gcc? I think this is a distinct
> possibility, in fact it may have already have happened for the c lib:
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/340555/
You are reading a WHOLE LOT into the above. Google may have many
reasons for rolling their own C lib for Android, which is all I saw in
that article.
--
Regards,
Ryan
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