Re: [Mingw-users] [mingw - C/C++] RE: MinGW and comercial use

[Garthy <ga...@ho...>]

Aaron,

> In general, the FSF's rule is that if a GPL program only transforms an input
> file to an output file, the GPL does not apply to the output file, such as with
> GCC.  However, if the translator includes part of itself in the output, then
> the entire output is considered to be part of the GPL. The latter was the case
> with the bison parser generator until relatively recently, until a special exception
> was made.  Note that GCC also encorporates a small amount of its source code
> into executables, but these also have a special exception.

I thought the bison issue was fixed a bit back, but it was
certainly an issue then. Having said that I ran into something
similar in the auto-tools ("missing") which AFAICT was under
GPL. This was fixed too, but caused me some hassles for a
while.

I'm not sure if it is as complex as the translator including
part of itself in the output making it under GPL. I think it
is more a matter that the use of a tool by and of itself won't
put something under the scope of the license, but if you use
the tool to embed something else under any license (eg. the
bison skeleton which was GPL for a while) then you may have
issues with the bison skeleton being under that license. Then
again, that's just my opinion, check with a lawyer, etc etc.

Garth