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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!think.com!paperboy.osf.org!hsdndev!wupost!uunet!kithrup!sef From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: [386BSD] Position on GPL and GNU software? (and libc.a) Message-ID: <1992Dec03.001051.1304@kithrup.COM> Date: 3 Dec 92 00:10:51 GMT References: <JKH.92Dec2002141@whisker.lotus.ie> <SCOTTM.92Dec2111009@intime.intime.com> Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd. Lines: 38 In article <SCOTTM.92Dec2111009@intime.intime.com> scottm@intime.intime.com (Scott Michel) writes: >Distribution: comp "comp" is not a valid distribution. A growing number of sites around the world have dropped scottm's article on the floor. Since it was erroneous in the extreme, that doesn't bother me too much, but it might bother him. >This isn't a bad idea at all, but even GNU has been pretty litigious. They >lost a court fight against Lotus earlier in the year, claiming that a Unix >port of 1-2-3 was now public because it incorporated a "public" library >(it was libc), and since the library was copylefted, therefore the entire >piece of software was. Wrong. The FSF has never sued anyone, and has never been taken to court. The UNIX port of Lotus was compiled by gcc, but there is nothing to be done, since, by the FSF's own words, programs compiled by gcc, and which happen to use the compiler-supplied libgcc.a, do not fall under the copyleft as a result. In addition, 1-2-3 for UNIX was not compiled using a "'public' library (it was libc)"; it was compiled under, as far as I know, an ISC UNIX, using gcc because it most closely matched the DOS compilers (which have been closer to ANSI than most UNIX compilers for longer); as I implied above, it pulled in libgcc.a, which contains small routines for the target machine that are not provided by the porter (such as multiplication / division on some machines, 64-bit arithmetic, etc.), but this is not a "libc" in any sense of the word, nor is it copylefted (that is to say, it does not fall under the GPL). >So, you're familiar with the case? I believe that either Unix Review or >Infoworld reported it. I sincerely doubt either of these magazines reported on a non-existant case. -- Sean Eric Fagan | "we will probably just crash immediately; but at least sef@kithrup.COM | we will have written less code." -----------------+ -- Chris Torek (torek@ee.lbl.gov) Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.