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New 'as' port: GPL requirements?

John Moran jmoran-binutils@cyconix.com
Tue Nov 8 10:16:00 GMT 2005 
Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:

> This conversation is _OFF TOPIC_ for this list.  Please take it
> somewhere else. 

I would like to develop 'gas', but its licence terms may not make this 
possible. It seemed to me that this would be a suitable place to find 
out before proceeding on to specific technical matters. My apologies if 
I was mistaken.

> In my opinion, as of that of many other posters on
> this list, using a proprietary library to implement a gas port would be
> a clear violation of the GPL; but the FSF's opinion is the only one
> that matters.

Indeed not. The only opinion that matters is the opinion of a judge who 
interprets the licence. Unfortunately, GPL 2.0 doesn't even specify what 
jurisdiction should be used for disputes, so there could be many valid 
interpretations.

Even the little Googling that I've carried out over the past hour shows 
that there is major dispute on what constitutes a 'derivative' work 
under the GPL and, specifically, on the issue of static vs. dynamic 
linking. In the only case that appears to have explicitly tested the 
definition of 'derivative' (Progress Software vs. MySQL) the judge 
concluded that this was a matter of 'fair dispute'. However, even this 
ruling would be meaningless outside that particular jurisdiction.

John
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