Re: [Amforth] Table driven CRC-8 generator/checker

[Erich W. <ew....@na...>]

Hi Enoch,


> By the way, I recommend that thought is given to encourage Amforth use
> in commercial (proprietary) designs. This is important if you wish to
> draw in professional developers (for their skills and opening up
> financial support opportunities).
>
> Even as things stand there is a way to "marry" GPL with proprietary code
> which is described here:
> <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem>.
> The basic idea is:
>
> "However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software
> alongside your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make
> sure that the free and non-free programs communicate at arms length,
> that they are not combined in a way that would make them effectively a
> single program."

"Alongside" is the important term here.

As far as I understood, building a Forth application means that
you always extent the original Forth system. This is, as far as
I know, a "derived work". In contrast to a compiled system,
where you can replace one compiler with another and one "libc"
with another and still have a working system, this doesn't work
with Forths. The words of you application and amforth form a
single programm.

I do not see a way to combine amforth (GPL) with a proprietary
application written in amforth. On the other hand, I'm of course
not a lawyer.

> Still, as the copyright holder you have the power to modify the license
> to facilitate certain Amforth usage. I will expand if you are
> interested.


Erich