[LLVMdev] GPL licensing issues or can GCC be used with llvm fora commercial application?

Razvan Aciu admin at kam.ro
Wed May 14 14:58:47 PDT 2008


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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