On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 07:45:43PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote: > David Starner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > (This case seems similar to the one > > > where Next wanted to ship GCC with their own Objective-C frontend, but > > > not to release the frontend under the GPL. RMS had his laweyrs write > > > to them and Next changed their mind.) > > > But the frontend actually has to be linked to GCC. > > I always wondered - if NeXT really had been serious about going > proprietary with their front end, what would have stopped them > from creating > > - a fully GPL'ed GCC fork which had the ability to dynamically link > to third party "plug-ins" for doing front-end stuff, using some > appropriate open interface > > plus > > - a proprietary, binary-only Objective-C plug-in?
RMS argues that that is illegal - that the plug-ins to a GPL program are derivates, and must come under the GPL. Actually, something many people have wanted to do for legimate reasons, is make the backend a seperate program, and have the frontend spit out a tree file that the backend reads in. NeXT could have done that. As I mentioned, DEC Modula 3 did something similar. I've also seen something on the compiler list that was known as GNU E (?) and was a GPL'ed frontend and completely proprietary libraries. NeXT also could have made the port in such a way that it only targeted NeXT systems, and put the real proprietary stuff in the kernel or system libraries. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
