> Why would a bootloader ever be considered part of the same program—they don't even ever run at the same time. Hmm, its not so easy, I think. A bootloader is

> Why would a bootloader ever be considered part of the same program—they don't even ever run at the same time. Hmm, its not so easy, I think. A bootloader is code that might be in the address space after boot and may well run even after boot. Real world examples of this are the PC-BIOS (if you agree to classify it as kind of a boot loader) and Sun OpenBoot PROM. The PC-BIOS routines are used during runtime of older Operating Systems and to bring up the newer ones. Diagnostics Mode on a Sun can be entered any time by pressing a special key combo (Stop+A) and this will run OpenBoot code. Even for more modern systems using U-Boot it is not clear cut. At least U-Boot deemed it necessary to clarify it in its license: "U-Boot is Free Software. It is copyrighted by Wolfgang Denk and many others who contributed code (see the actual source code and the git commit messages for details). You can redistribute U-Boot and/or modify it under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. Most of it can also be distributed, at your option, under any later version of the GNU General Public License -- see individual files for exceptions. NOTE! This license does not cover the so-called "standalone" applications that use U-Boot services by means of the jump table provided by U-Boot exactly for this purpose - this is merely considered normal use of U-Boot, and does not fall under the heading of "derived work" -- see file Licenses/Exceptions for details. " EDIT: Just to be clear, I agree with lights0123's main argument, I just wanted to point out that it's not trivial and that "they don't even ever run at the same time." is not the strongest supporting point.