Re: [tlug] A semi-related question

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Kenneth" == Kenneth  <emry@example.com> writes:

    Kenneth> No.  Not in all cases.  Their compilers, and standard
    Kenneth> libraries that are required by ANSI/OSI standards, as
    Kenneth> well as a number that are not technically required but
    Kenneth> make things much easier to use, are not affected by this.
    Kenneth> They are a special case scenerio.

AFAIK, legally they are not special cases in general.  Running a
program does not ipso facto make the product of that program a
derivative.  What does need special permission are the helper
functions (eg, crt0.o for GCC and MSVCRT.DLL for Visual C/C++).

The standard libraries are another matter (that's why some GNU system
libraries are LGPL).  However, they do not infect your program; they
infect the user's core image.  The FSF says that means that you (the
application programmer) must get the library copyright holder's
permission to distribute, since you obviously intend and expect that
to happen, but as far as I know there is neither legislation nor case
law that directly bears on it yet.

Note that this really only matters for free software, and specifically
strong copyleft ("viral") licenses like the GPL.  A proprietary
library vendor would simply write it into the EULA, which is much
easier to enforce than to rely on generic copyright.  

-- 
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