🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm the guy that started this thread and I'm still confused.  I am now
told that libc.a is *not* a GNU library under Linux?!?!  What's all
this about the 'vendor' libraries.  Are you guys telling that the
libraries were not written by the GNUs?  If so who does write the
lib*.a stuff under Linux?  Does Torvalds himself hand code the stuff
in 32-bit assembler.  I would like to get a real answer to this before
I start working.  I'd hate to write something for the market and then
be forced to make it free because I used a few library functions.

This is one case where I think Microsquash has it all over the FSF.
When I learned to code in C I went out and bought Quick-C 2.something.
It cost me about $60 and considering that I only had a 286 it was
fine.  I wrote thousands of lines of code with that thing.  In the
docs they basically tell you that you are free to do wahtever you want
with the libraries.  You can link to them to your heart's content and
then you sell your code or your binaries or you can post it on the net
and give it away free.  They don't care what you do with them.  The
assumption is that people buy compilers to write code and then they
will likely sell it.  They would not sell you a compiler that you
could only use if you paid them royalties.  And this is Microsquash
we're talking about here.  Not exactly the most humanitarian bunch of
people.  The FSF should put their libraries out under a similar
licence (or anti-licence if you like)

One of the posters said something really intelligent.  'The LGPL is
one of the big obstacles to business use of Linux'  or something like it.
I agree.  Businesses will generate tons of code for an OS if they
think they can get some of their investment back by selling it.  If
you can't be sure that you can write a program with your compiler and
then market it your incentive to write code is stifled.  This is a
shame because Linux has it all over Win or WinNT in terms of general
robustness.  I mean I've got 7 apps up under X right now.  Windoze
crashes after #3 or so and then still can't run all at once... - GP