[cfe-dev] FUD in clang vs GCC comparision ?

[John Criswell]

On 8/2/12 9:47 AM, Буров Дмитрий wrote:
> "GCC is licensed under the GPL license. clang uses a BSD license, which
> allows it to be used by projects that do not themselves want to be GPL."
> http://clang.llvm.org/comparison.html

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

I believe the text to which you refer is about reusing parts of Clang in 
other compiler-related projects.  It is not talking about the licensing 
of programs compiled with Clang.

For example, if I understand correctly, if you reused GCC's code to 
build a front-end for a new programming language, that front-end would 
need to be licensed under the GNU GPL.  If you built that same front-end 
using Clang, then you could license it however you wanted provided that 
you followed the restrictions in the BSD-style license that Clang uses.

You are correct that both GCC and Clang can be used to compile 
proprietary code.  I don't believe it was the intention of the person 
who wrote that page to say otherwise.

-- John T.

>
> GLIBC requires linked programs to follow GPL.
> But for what i know GCC alone does not have such.
>
> For example Opera for Linux started as GCC w/o GLIBC project, and it is
> totalyl proprietary.
> More so, the page itself does link to the letter
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2004-12/msg00888.html
> which outright tells that GCC may be used to compile proprietary programs.
>