Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > If you're going to suggest that a compiler licence should give some > general BSD-like permission for copyrightable stuff that gets inserted > into the output, then the problem is that someone might modify the > compiler so that it outputs itself in a Quine-like fashion, so unless > you want to BSD the whole compiler you have no choice but to identify > the runtime support bits and give broader permission just for those > parts, which is what the GCC and the OCaml people seem to have done.
That really isn't a risk: the original author grants a license, and nobody else can change those. If I change GCC to emit its entire source into the output, that doesn't get me unfettered rights with respect to it even given the FSF's "clarification". The items in the OCaml "runtime" are the VM, the standard library, and some other libraries. But the optimized form of tail recursion, for example, is a neat creation and doesn't come from the standard library. I really don't understand enough of the OCaml native compiler to tell for sure what this means. But when I see INRIA handing out a license that specifically mentions items which link to the compiler, I have to assume that they mean *something*, and didn't just pick a license with a giant meaningless clause. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
