Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/01/11/03:36:22
Weiqi Gao wrote:
>
> OK, it's Friday, and I'm have free-flowing thoughts.
>
> One of them is this: We keep hearing that DJGPP is the best compiler
> in its class. But how could that be so if the complete source code is
> awailable publicly. Couldn't the people at, say, Watcom, simply
> examine the code and come up with better ideas?
Not according to DJGPP's license, they can't. I'm not 100% sure of
this, but a great deal of DJGPP's code falls under the GNU General
Public License, which does two things that would make Watcom or any
commercial company quite leery of trying to steal anything:
1) It makes it illegal to use GPLed code in proprietary software.
2) It requires that the sources to any software based in any way on the
GPLed code be made publicly available to anyone who uses that software.
The big companies would have quite a hard time swallowing those
provisions, I think. Check out the file, "COPYING" in the DJGPP docs,
to read the entire GPL.
BTW, so you all don't panic, this does not necessarily apply to programs
written _using_ the GNU software; only programs based on or derived in
any way from it. Certain of the C++ class libraries (libgpp.a) do fall
under the GPL, but that can be worked around. :)
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