[License-discuss] Making the PHP FAQ generic

[Lawrence Rosen]

Are restrictions on the *use* or *results* of proprietary compilers
consistent with generating open source programs in that language? Can the
copying of binary code into an executable by the compiler itself affect the
license on that executable?

I have heard people ask if running a GPL compiler that includes GPL
libraries into a resulting program creates a GPL obligation for the
resulting program. I hope not!

/Larry


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana at redhat.com] 
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2012 11:13 AM
To: Karl Fogel; license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Making the PHP FAQ generic

On Fri, Dec 07, 2012 at 01:07:23PM -0600, Karl Fogel wrote:
> Also, it might good to talk about implementations of languages being 
> open source, rather than the languages themselves.  It's a bit 
> pedantic, but I think it can be worded naturally, and it would 
> emphasize the conceptual cut one has to make to really understand the 
> answer.  If you compile your C program with Borland's C compiler, that 
> doesn't make your program closed-source; by the same token, if you run 
> your Python program on the most widely-used implementation of Python, 
> which is open source, that doesn't make your code open source by default.
> 
> People who ask that question may think they're asking about the 
> language, but they're really asking about the particular language 
> implementation.  This should be made clear to them in the answer.

+1. I encounter a surprising amount of confusion about this point.

 - Richard

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