*BSD News Article 3867


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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