Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!apple!agate!saturn!sidney From: sidney@saturn.ucsc.edu (Sidney Markowitz ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: libg++ and copylefts Message-ID: <8455@saturn.ucsc.edu> Date: 21 Jul 89 09:07:32 GMT References: <2053@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <6590203@hplsla.HP.COM> <904@accuvax.nwu.edu> <914@accuvax.nwu.edu> <329@gt-eedsp.gatech.edu> Reply-To: sidney@saturn.ucsc.edu (Sidney Markowitz ) Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz Lines: 55 In article <329@gt-eedsp.gatech.edu> baud@gt-eedsp.UUCP (Kurt Baudendistel) writes: >In article <914@accuvax.nwu.edu> morrison@accuvax.nwu.edu (Vance Morrison ) writes: >>After following this discussion of copylefts and listening to a lot of >>people rant at the evil of the copyleft, it occures to be there is a >>very simple solution to the problem[: distribute your code as object to >>be linked with gnu code]. > >This sounds great, but it won't work for libg++ since this library is and >must be distributed in source form. You only have to make the copylefted sources available, you can still distribute the binaries, and you can charge for the media and handling costs of distributing the source. I quote from the FSF copyleft, otherwise known as "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 1, February 1989" which comes with the statement "Copyright (C) 1989 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA" Along with stating that any modifications or derived works of the software must be covered under the same terms of being freely distributable and with source code available, it says: "Mere aggregation of another independent work with the Program (or its derivative) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of these terms." Well, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't understand why you can't package libg++ (binary and source) on a tape with your proprietary object files and have a customer do the link as part of installation, but here's something that just came from rms himself on the info-gcc mailing list. It's not quite the same, but it's about packaging code to be linked with FSF code by the user. [begin quote] Date: Thu, 20 Jul 89 18:54:55 EDT From: rms@ai.mit.edu To: info-gcc@prep.ai.mit.edu Subject: Next and copyleft A few weeks ago, I found out, along with the readers of this list, that NeXT was distributing proprietary code for the user to link with GCC. A while later, I told them this was not permitted and asked them to stop. Apparently, through a noisy communication channel with me, they had got the impression that I had said this was ok. They agreed to stop distributing the proprietary front-end, as I requested. They have written a new, free objective C front-end which will be released soon by them, and merged into the standard GNU C distribution when I have time. [end quote] -- sidney markowitz