On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Brian Granger <ellisonbg....@gmail.com> wrote: >> How is it a derived work of Sage? That argument seems to lead to the >> conclusion that my C code would be considered a derived work of GCC. > > Your GCC compiled code is a derived work and that (in my > understanding) is why there exists the so called "runtime exception" > to the GPL that covers this usage case: > > http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gcc-exception.html
The runtime exception is to allow the use of the gcc runtime, which is a library gcc links to your code when you need to produce a program which runs. AFAICT, if you replaced the gcc runtime with something else, or you just used the object files compiled by gcc (no linking), you wouldn't need this exception. And note that this applies just to the binary; in general, when you compile source code against a library, it is considered that you produce a derivative work in so far you use (a) header files (b) linking data from the libraries. But it's not clear to me that the original *source code* can be considered a derivative in any way... In the case of sage/python code, there's no compilation... it doesn't look like writing a python/sage script would constitute a derivative work of python or sage, so far as you don't distribute *.pyc files... I guess somebody could argue that using "import" statements, or published APIs can be considered "derivative work" as linking is, but it sounds strange... IANAL, etc. Gonzalo > >> That sounds silly to me (but, of course, that doesn't prevent it from >> possibly being true legally :). > > I agree that this is silly. > > Brian > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
