🚀 go-pugleaf

:-> In comp.lang.misc, twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
:In article <36rm5h$5hq@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>,
:Tom Christiansen  <tchrist@mox.perl.com> wrote:
:
:>{
:>    Somewhere I should add the jibe, er comment that businesses ship
:>    product that use tcl/tk and/or perl, and that they couldn't do this if
:>    they had no access to nonGPVed versions of these languages, which
:>    not insignificantly contributes to their popularity.
:>}
:
:I really have to question this again, depending on your
:definition of "couldn't."  If you mean "couldn't persuade
:company lawyers to accept this," I'll defer since I have had
:no experience dealing with corporate lawyers in the process
:of releasing a software package.

Yes, this is not insignificant.  It's very very hard.

:But if you mean "couldn't do this legally according to the
:GPL," I doubt it.  In the first place, I hope you're not
:seriously arguing that placing a compiler under the GPL
:causes all code written for the language implemented by that
:compiler to be GPLed as well.  Even the FSF -- tyrannical
:Luddites that people around here seem to claim them to be --
:doesn't take that position.


No, that's not what I meant.  It has to do with the fact that you can
embed your perl or tcl in other programs (as though they were a library)
or dynamically load up your own private routines into this.  Perl's
alternate licence (the Artistic Licence) specifically covers these cases,
and tcl's copymiddle makes it ok too.  But I've spent a lot of time
convincing people that it's ok to use perl despite its gnuishness.

:In the second place, there
:would be nothing preventing them from shipping these
:products with Tcl/Tk or Perl code embedded in them, and
:advising their clients that they could receive the source
:code for the Tcl or Perl compilers if they wished.  

Ok, than what's to stop me from using part or all of some GPLed program in
another program, compiling it, and telling people I'd give them the GNU
portion if they wanted, but not mine?  Unless I'm confused, this you can't
do, and is why they call it the GPV.  Embedding is more a library issue, 
and I don't GNU library licence being particularly successful.

--tom

-- 
    "...this does not mean that some of us should not want, in a rather
    dispassionate sort of way, to put a bullet through csh's head."
                Larry Wall in <1992Aug6.221512.5963@netlabs.com>