6 ms·

> a 6-year-old GCC bolted to a proprietary backend Not only a violation of the GPL, but for a code owned by the FSF and even Stallman himself. That's a bold m

• ericseppanen 10y ago
  From what I can tell, they have structured it in a way that it's a violation in spirit, but not in letter. They don't link to GCC code directly; instead they output the intermediate representation and execute a standalone binary to finish processing the IR. They offer source code for all their GCC modifications, but carefully work around the GPL to accomplish the same thing.
• frozenport 10y ago
  Yeah they tried to obfuscate their internals precisely so this wouldn't happen. Notice how it didn't stop anybody, but instead led to poor user experience.
• the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  Typically those are creative workarounds for the GPL not actual violations.
  • lmm 10y ago
    The question of whether what they've produced is a derivative work of GCC is one for the courts, which tend to take a dim view of creative workarounds.
    • the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
      Absolutely not. The GPL boundary is very clearly defined and intentionally has never been brought to court.
      • lmm 10y ago
        How so? The GPL grants permission to distribute derivative works in general under the GPL, and additionally to distribute derivative works consisting of object code that is the compiled form of system libraries (narrowly defined) without including that source (though AIUI still under the GPL); that's all. If someone were distributing a derivative work of a GPLed program not under the GPL and therefore without permission (i.e. without being otherwise licensed by the copyright holder), that would be copyright infringement. The question of what is or is not a derivative work in the general case is absolutely a question for the court. The FSF explicitly says as much: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
        • the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
          All of this is irrelevant. The GPL stops at the process boundary and that's exactly what these compilers do. They provide the modifications to GCC itself under the GPL and then have separate executables that are proprietary that feed things in and out of GCC.
          • nitrogen 10y ago
            It's still pretty clearly a violation of the intentions of the gcc developers, and something that only exists to wrap one product seems very suspiciously like a derivative work. I'd be curious to see this tested in court.
            • the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
              But the FSF would not be curious to test this in court because they know they lose. I had this conversation many years ago with people that wrote extactly this type of software and the general consensus was that the FSF would stay away from probing the GPL there because there is angood chance that the ruling would set a precedent they don't want. The FUD surrounding the license in that regard is preferrable. In general it's 2016 and no longer relevant. The world moved on to LLVM and these GCC using toolchains are on their way out for good.