Re: [Mingw-users] Building MinGW gcc 4.6.1 on Windows with msys

[John E. / T. <td...@td...>]

On 10/19/2011 12:52 PM, David Gressett wrote:
> Also, with the MinGW gcc, the people who build it are being picky about compliance with Microsoft software licenses, and I don't know how well TDM-gcc is handling that situation. I do know that the MinGW64 crowd is being sloppy. If Microsoft ever decides to drop a ton of legal bricks on license violators, MinGW gcc will be OK. The others will probably disappear.

The 32-bit edition of TDM-GCC is no more and no less than a drop-in 
replacement for MinGW's GCC packages, and is based entirely on 
GPL(+exception) and LGPL code. (This can be easily discerned from the 
README.) The mingwrt and w32api packages, whence any concerns about 
Microsoft licensing would stem, must come from the MinGW project.

Your objection to rebuilding all your projects with a different compiler 
is certainly valid, particularly since TDM-GCC's default distribution 
has two ABI incompatibilities with MinGW's -- its SJLJ exception model 
(vs. MinGW's DW2), and its use of a "fully dynamic" std::string class 
(necessary when using static libstdc++ and DLLs).

Cheers,
John E. / TDM