Re: gcc mingw64 compiler installer
On 08/06/2010 08:11 PM,
In article
<81c19a5e-0efc-4bac-8eb9-328cdb0bca11@u26g2000yqu.googlegroups.com>,
Lew<lew@lewscanon.com> wrote:
Lew wrote:
MinGW ("Minimalistic GNU for
I find it peculiar that they say, "Unlike other ports of GCC to
Windows, the runtime libraries are not distributed using GNU's
General Public License (GPL)."
How do they get away with that?
John B. Matthews wrote:
I have no MinGW experience, but the GPL applies to redistribution. If
the public domain MinGW runtime only targets your customer's existing
msvcrt and your code doesn't link to any GPL code, then the license for
your executable built with the gcc tool chain should be entirely your
call.
That answers how *I* would get away with it, but not how *they* do. Unless
they aren't actually redistributing GNU code.
I guess if they use no actual GNU source or binaries, then the mere fact that
they call themselves a "GNU" product has nothing to do with GPL obligations.
So one concludes that they must have a clean-room implementation of their
"port... of GCC to Windows".
I guess because I haven't researched it in detail yet, and probably never
will. GCJ sucks big time, so I don't imagine MinGW's version would be better,
and besides, Java is already free from at least two sources and becoming more
and more open-source every day from at least one, so I ask again,
rhetorically, why bother with third-rate substitutes?
--
Lew