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From: dsmythe@cup.portal.com (dave l smythe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Re^2: GNU programs, copyleft (was Re: IS MT UUCP Legal??) (
Message-ID: <20456@cup.portal.com>
Date: 15 Jul 89 04:17:05 GMT
References: <4456ee6c.14a1f@gtephx.UUCP> <1602@atari.UUCP>  <20384@cup.portal.com> <1603@atari.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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> Allan Pratt says:
>However, I'm still looking for definitive statements, not examples and
>guidelines.  What are the rules?  I'm not talking about distributing
>the compiler; I'm talking about distributing code compiled with the
>compiler. Pretend I didn't post anything earlier, just answer the
>question: under what circumstances can I use GCC to create a program
>without having to make anything but the executable available, under

You can distribute anything that you wrote that was compiled by the compiler.
As far as what you link together with that, you can distribute the root module
and any library code that isn't under copyleft and not provide source code. 
Merely compiling code with GCC does not in-and-of-itself put it under copyleft.

There has been something of a religious war going on in gnu.gcc that was started
by a guy from Apple posting that he had diffs for a port of GCC to the Mac that
he had done.  In the midst of the argument, many of these issues were rehashed/
clarified by RMS, so I'd check back-issues of gnu.gcc (the past 6 weeks or so)
for an answer "straight from the horse's mouth" as it were.

Dave Smythe
dsmythe@cup.portal.com