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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Restrictions on free UNIX / 386BSD (Re: selling 386BSD) Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!think.com!unixland!rmkhome!rmk From: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) Organization: The Man With Ten Cats Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 02:46:48 GMT Reply-To: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) Message-ID: <9208182146.53@rmkhome.UUCP> References: <9208162341.30@rmkhome.UUCP> <PHR.92Aug17112028@soda.berkeley.edu> <9208171721.29@rmkhome.UUCP> <1992Aug18.065641.4877@panix.com> Lines: 41 In article <1992Aug18.065641.4877@panix.com> tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) writes: >In article <9208171721.29@rmkhome.UUCP> rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes: >>In article <PHR.92Aug17112028@soda.berkeley.edu> phr@soda.berkeley.edu (Paul Rubin) writes: >>> >... Next, Sun (In Solaris 2), and I believe MIPS ship GCC with >>> >their products, in some cases as the primary compilers. This >>> >sort of distribution is not practical for an operating system. >>> >>> And from reading comp.unix.solaris, I get the idea that a number >>> of development shops will buy compilers for Solaris 2.0 because of >>> the GNU Copyleft. >>> >>>The copyleft does not prevent development shops from using GCC. >>>If they think it does, they haven't been paying attention, or they are >>>letting their decisions be controlled by paranoid knee-jerk reactions >>>instead of by intelligence. I'm sure this makes Sun happy; there's >>>one born every minute, as the saying goes. I don't see this as a >>>reason to let Sun and others make proprietary GCC's. I can't see >>>any benefit of a non-copyleft GCC that could outweigh sacrificing >>>the hundreds of improvements, ports, etc. that people have been >>>allowed to contribute because the marketroids they work for weren't >>>permitted to grab the improvements for themselves. >> >>But some lawyers believe that the use of GCC to develop proprietary >>applications that are shipped "binary only" may be hazardous to a >>companies legal health. The GPL has not been tested deeply in court. > >And I suppose you don't know about the special license, *not* the ordinary GPL, >under which the GNU libraries and similar portions of GCC are distributed. Nice >try. I'm not a lawyer. That's not my job. Are you a lawyer? I have looked at the copy of GPL provided with several GNU applications in the last few days. It doesn't seem to be consistent. -- Rick Kelly rmk@rmkhome.UUCP unixland!rmkhome!rmk rmk@frog.UUCP