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From: laird@chinet.chi.il.us (Laird J. Heal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Gnu C Compiler for MPW Unchained!
Message-ID: <1990Dec13.104620.6232@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 13 Dec 90 10:46:20 GMT
References: <1990Dec5.202855.6434@eng.umd.edu> <1990Dec11.140812.1003@chinet.chi.il.us> <1990Dec11.202347.26210@verity.com>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 35

In article <1990Dec11.202347.26210@verity.com> anders@verity.com (Anders Wallgren) writes:
>In article <1990Dec11.140812.1003@chinet.chi.il.us>, laird@chinet (Laird J. Heal) writes:
>>
>>Here, however I would like to note that the GNU Public License (which Apple
>>is probably subscribing to - I have not bothered to ftp COPYING from the gcc
>>distribution at apple) requires a vendor to make ALL source code available.
>			^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>This is wrong and just plain absurd!  Along that same line of
>reasoning, since we need MPW in the first place, Apple should release
>the source code to that as well.

You can run an MPW tool standalone.  I hope you just got caught up in
the spirit of argumentativeness.

>                                  Oh, but you also need to run the
>Macintosh OS in order to run MPW, so I guess we'll have to give you
>the sources to that, too.  I don't think this was the original
>intention of the GNU project's copyleft policy.  More specifically, at
>the bottom of Paragraph 3 in COPYING:
>
>	"Source code for a work means the preferred form of the work
>	 for making modifications to it.  
>
>The key phrase is "for making modifications to it," 
>
I believe it was made clear that there was a nasty bug in the compiler
which prevented it from being usable if it were compiled by itself.
That is, it was only usable if produced by MPW C.  That being the case,
where does the C compiler begin and where does it end?  Standard libraries
are one thing, usable source code is another.  If the fix to the bug in
source code lies in other source code...should the license not cover that
other source code?
-- 
Laird J. Heal                           The Usenet is dead!
Here:  laird@chinet.chi.il.us		Long Live the Usenet!