EDA vendors incorporating gcc/mingw/gdb

[Christian Jonassen]

Hi

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Hendrik Weimer <hendrik at enyo.de> wrote:
> Peter Roozemaal <mathfox at xs4all.nl> writes:
>
>> AZ wrote:
>>
>>> I assume that those vendors are not all breaking the law, so how
>>> should I understand the term "incorporate"? If a windows installer
>>> that installs a big software system places MinGW/gdb into that system
>>> subdirectory and then a proprietary GUI calls gcc in the backend and
>>> displays its output on the transcript area, then is it incorporation
>>> or not?
>>
>> Short answer: When gcc is on the harddisk as a separate program and is
>> run as a separate process, that does not bring the GUI under the GPL.
>
> I am not sure about this. The question is whether one is a derived
> work of the other, which is not a technical question on how the the
> programs communicate with each other, but a legal one. You cannot
> legally build a command-line wrapper for a GPLed library and combine
> it with proprietary code.
>
> It is possible that the FSF as the copyright holder of gcc and gdb
> does not object such uses, but this would be a special exception
> rather than what is being granted by the text of the GPL.