Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!hoptoad!gnu
From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: GNU C versus Objective-C
Message-ID: <5716@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 21 Oct 88 11:46:07 GMT
References: <17780@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <[9.5]karl@ddsw1.alt.next> <12935@oberon.USC.EDU>
Organization: Grasshopper Group in San Francisco
Lines: 35

papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) wrote:
> As I understand it, NO software bundled with the Next box has been built
> with GNU-C, but instead with Stepstone Objective-C.

According to the info given to the press at the introduction, this is false.
Objective-C is a preprocessor which generates C code.  This is fed to the
GNU C compiler.  The GNU debugger and Emacs are also supplied.

Other information leads me to believe that NeXT has enhanced the
debugger so it can display and trace the original Objective-C code
rather than the dense inscrutable intermediate C code.  Also, the
subroutine libraries are not from the GNU project (I'd guess they are
mostly just the Unix libraries).  This avoids the problem of linking
GNU-copyrighted code into your binaries.*

The GNU's Bulletins v1#4 and v1#5 say:
"Thanks to NEXT, Inc., for their improvements to the GNU Assembler
and GNU Debugger." and "Thanks to NeXT, Inc., for their cash donation."

	John Gilmore

*  Code generated BY a compiler is NOT considered copyrighted by the
compiler's owner, under US copyright case law.  However, code generated
FROM copyrighted sources IS copyrighted by the source code owner.  Thus
if you write foo.c, you own foo.o too, and the owner of "cc" has no
rights in it.  But if you link foo.o with libc.a, the owner of
libc.a has rights in the resulting program.  AT&T, and some other
compiler vendors, have specifically given away these rights, allowing
you to use their binary libraries in your programs without limitation.
The Free Software Foundation does not give away these rights, though it
is a topic of debate.  Let's not debate it here.
-- 
John Gilmore    {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu    gnu@toad.com
		Noriega-Bush in '88 -- a *crack* team.  
Let's put the white powder (CIA = Cocaine Import Agency) in the white house!