Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!shelby!helens!jim
From: jim@kaos.Stanford.EDU (Jim Helman)
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc
Subject: Re: NeXt and copyleft
Message-ID: <JIM.89Jul26194301@kaos.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 27 Jul 89 02:43:02 GMT
References: <DLD.89Jul25124612@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU>
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Followup-To: gnu.misc.discuss
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In-reply-to: dld@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU's message of 25 Jul 89 16:46:12 GMT

It's a fine line, but I don't see any reason for confusion.

If the NeXT Objective C front end has to be linked with portions of
GCC itself, it could reasonably be considered an extended version of
GCC.

Postings by FSFers have made it quite clear that this violates the
spirit and letter of copyleft.  One of their major goals has been to
make improved versions (including source) widely available.

The letting-the-user-do-the-link loophole allows the linking of
unrelated code against a standard library such as libg++.  To quote
RMS (7-Jun-89) gnu.gcc:

	If these libraries are standard, then it would be hard to
	argue that the developer is doing anything which intrinsically
	relates to the GNU libraries in question.  He might not even
	know whether users choose to link with GNU libraries or other
	libraries.  So this must be permitted.

The routines making up GCC are clearly not standard library routines.

Jim Helman
Department of Applied Physics			P.O. Box 10494
Stanford University				Stanford, CA 94309
(jim@thrush.stanford.edu) 			(415) 723-4940