Re: More questions about the QPL for compilers and other things
Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org> 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 bts@alum.mit.edu
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