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From: gl8f@astsun7.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Lotus 1-2-3 was compiled with GNU C compiler!?
Message-ID: <1990Jul16.204332.12017@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 16 Jul 90 20:43:32 GMT
References: <2699D59A.D60@tct.uucp> <1990Jul11.164306.7313@sco.COM> <393@necssd.NEC.COM>
Sender: news@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia
Lines: 23

In article <393@necssd.NEC.COM> harrison@necssd.NEC.COM (Mark Harrison) writes:

>As much as I disapprove of Lotus' sue-happy mentality, this illustrates
>a concern I have always had about the GNU license.  It is too hard to
>tell if something falls under the license!

Doesn't seem that hard to me. If you compile your program with gcc or
g++, it doesn't fall under the library unless you explicitly link to a
FSF library*, or install FSF header files**. The only FSF program
which routinely produces output that is copylefted is bison.

[ * old versions of g++ used to link in libg++ automatically but that's
  not true anymore.

  ** InterViews now contains all the header files you need. ]

See, that's not too bad. Only 2 footnotes to that sentence, of which
one is obselete and the other is something you must explicitly decide
at installation time.

--
"Perhaps I'm commenting a bit cynically, but I think I'm qualified to."
                                              - Dan Bernstein