Re: licensing questions

[David Malcolm <dmalcolm@redhat.com>]

On Thu, 2019-02-21 at 18:23 +0100, Paulo Matos wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> libgccjit is released with GCC and therefore GPLv3.
> This seems to mean, from my relatively low knowledge in this area,
> that
> all libraries linking to libgccjit to create bindings and libraries
> and
> applications linking to this library are forced into GPLv3.
> 
> I though LGPL was created with the purpose of stopping the viral
> spread
> of GPLv3. Was it the authors decision to make it GPLv3 instead of
> LGPL -
> which would have been, I guess, more flexible?

[I am not a lawyer, and I don't represent anyone here]

IIRC, my thinking at that time was that the GCC-as-shared-library
feature might be controversial (as well as a technical challenge), and
I didn't want to have to also deal with a license debate on top of
those two.  Hence I went with the GPLv3 as a path of last resistance. 
I haven't yet run into any issues with the license in my own work (but
all my work is free software, so...)

The FSF owns the copyright here.  Perhaps a case could be made that it
might serve the FSF's strategic interests to allow some kind of dual
licensing of libgccjit, but I'm not sure either way.  (It's not
something I want to spend my own cycles on pursuing, but if someone
else cares, fair enough; I suspect that that's more a topic for an FSF-
strategy-focused-list, rather than this mailing list, though).

Dave