Re: Licencing policy for gdb Python plugins

[Daniel Jacobowitz <daniel.jacobowitz@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Stan Shebs <stanshebs@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On 7/10/12 3:33 PM, Joachim Protze wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> while the discussion in the last session of the GNU cauldron, the
>> question raised, whether there is a licencing policy for Python plugins,
>> as there is a quite strict policy for gcc plugins. As no one in the
>> audience had an opinion to this question, I think the gdb developers
>> attended the other track. Searching the wiki, the mailinglist and the
>> web I did not find any hints for a policy. Is there any policy or
>> recommendation?
>>
>
> Sorry, some of us were off in a different room and didn't notice the time!
>
> In any case, I don't recall much thought about a GDB plugin licensing
> policy, but I imagine there would have to be a pretty strong rationale for
> it to differ from the GCC policy.

Well, the GCC policy is very compiler-specific and frankly ugly; it is
designed to prevent use of the GPL'd frontend with a non-GPL backend
inserted as a "plugin", or third-party non-GPL optimizers.  It does
this by means of clauses in the libgcc and other runtime licenses,
which can only be used as GPL if a non-GPL plugin was used to produce
the compiler output, preventing the compilation of proprietary
software.  (That's how I remember it anyway - check primary sources).

I'd rather see something looser for GDB, where plugins are more
consumers than contributors, but I haven't thought about it that much.

>
> Stan Shebs
> stan@codesourcery.com
>



-- 
Thanks,
Daniel