llvm dev - May 2008 - [LLVMdev] GPL licensing issues or can GCC be used with llvm for a commercial application?

Thanks for your replies. This is indeed a helpful mailing list. I made some 
more researches about the licensing issue and this is what I discovered:

- from FSF it seems that packaging together a GPL application and a 
commercial one it is a corner case of licensing. Here is what they say:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem
It seems that if I use GCC only as a command line tool, it should be ok. 
Anyway, there is a catch: "But if the semantics of the communication are 
intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could 
be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program.".
In our case, the communication means sending entire programs and command 
line arguments and receiving warnings and error codes. Is this intimate 
enough or not? I think we need a more authoritative answer here.

- other guys understand GPL by strictly forbidding distribution of the GPL 
product with a non-GPL one. The nice XVID codec is released under GPL and 
here is what they say:
http://www.xvid.org/FAQ.42.0.html (go to the license questions).
In that case they say that even I only package the XVID codec with a 
proprietary software with the soly purpose to install it in Windows and 
after that I use only the Windows interface to it (like any other 
proprietary Windows software does) , GPL forbids me to do that.

- I didn't find any commercial projects (not Operating Systems or 
dual-licensed but simple applications) which package GPL applications with 
proprietary ones. If you know such applications, please let me know so I can 
check their license.

- during the testing, I saw that YASM can also assemble a GAS compatible 
syntax. I tried to use it and it worked well, except the fact that the 
segments names were too long for the COFF format, because of a standard 
prefix added to them by the llvm native generator. In that case I don't know
if the link phase will be done ok (especially if the linker is able to 
remove the unused segments or setup the correct segments attributes).

For now, I think for a commercial developer who wants to create a complete 
compiler toolchain using llvm, trying to package its compiler with GCC is a 
very dangerous decision. If I am myself in that situation I should not do 
it, but instead I should try to use a non-GPL assembler and linker. So, from 
my point of view, the necessity of an I86 native target who address a 
BSD-like licensed assembler, strongly remains.

Razvan

On Tue, 2008-05-13 at 23:36 -0700, Chris Lattner wrote:
> As I mentioned before, I would support people who wanted to extend
> the  
> scope of this project to include new toolchain pieces.  All that
> we're  
> missing is for someone to actually do the work :).

Could someone with a tolerance for legal bullshit look at the Open
Watcom license
(http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Open_Watcom_Public_License) and see
if maybe bundling wlink is an option?

-- 
Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> (GoogleTalk:
ttmrichter at gmail.com)
In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will
know the man. (孔夫子)
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On Tue, 2008-05-13 at 23:36 -0700, Chris Lattner wrote:
> I don't want to discourage you, but you are basically asking for  
> interpretation of legal documents...
> If you really really need to know the answer to questions like these,  
> the best bet is to hire legal council.
Chris is right. I would add that it sounds like you are already getting
nonsense responses.

However, when you look for a lawyer, look for one who has dealt with GPL
before. It is a very different type of license than most, and the
majority of IP lawyers today remain unfamiliar with it. Further, a
lawyer's training is to maximize the interests of their clients, not the
interests of a community. This can lead to misunderstandings.

We experienced all of these issues at IBM when I was there.


shap

Hi Chris,

I think you are right. Most of the replies told me to consult a lawyer and 
this doesn't makes me sure at all that I will not run into troubles if I 
package the gcc with a commercial application. This thread ( 
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/browse_thread/thread/0dcbb511a50ecffd#
)
tells me the same thing, that this is dangerous and I want to keep myself 
out of troubles.

So I made up my mind and I will not use gcc. Since I need an I86 native 
target for a BSD-like licensed assembler after about 2-3 months, if it is 
not done until then I will make myself a target like 
"-x86-asm-syntax=intel-nasm". Unfortunately for this I will need to
learn
the llvm TableGen system and possibly other things so it will take me 
probably some few weeks. For this amount of work I am not yet prepared to 
release the patch for free. Anyway, for smaller things I will keep myself 
contributing to the community.

Razvan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Lattner" <sabre at nondot.org>
To: "LLVM Developers Mailing List" <llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 9:36 AM
Subject: Re: [LLVMdev] GPL licensing issues or can GCC be used with llvm 
fora commercial application?

> On May 13, 2008, at 10:04 PM, Razvan Aciu wrote:
>> Thanks for your replies. This is indeed a helpful mailing list. I
>> made some
>> more researches about the licensing issue and this is what I
>> discovered:
>
>> For now, I think for a commercial developer who wants to create a
>> complete
>> compiler toolchain using llvm, trying to package its compiler with
>> GCC is a
>> very dangerous decision.
>
> Hi Razvan,
>
> I don't want to discourage you, but you are basically asking for
> interpretation of legal documents.  This is a very tricky area, and
> taking advise from random people on the internet is not a great idea
> (extension of the "on the internet noone knows you're a dog"
theory).
> If you really really need to know the answer to questions like these,
> the best bet is to hire legal council.
>
> If you just want a reasonably sure bet, you can look to the lead of
> others.  In the US, there are many organizations comfortable with
> integrating LLVM and GCC and using GNU tools in the toolchain of
> proprietary compilers.  If your situation is similar to those, you may
> be satisfied that you won't have a problem.
>
>> If I am myself in that situation I should not do
>> it, but instead I should try to use a non-GPL assembler and linker.
>> So, from
>> my point of view, the necessity of an I86 native target who address a
>> BSD-like licensed assembler, strongly remains.
>
> As I mentioned before, I would support people who wanted to extend the
> scope of this project to include new toolchain pieces.  All that we're
> missing is for someone to actually do the work :).
>
> -Chris
>
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