Re: Copyleft and embedded Forth

On Feb 7, 11:40=A0am, s...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>
> What are you actually trying to accomplish?
>
Trying to find a copyleft license that's best for promoting code reuse
(the building of a public code repository) without placing
unreasonable restrictions on commercial developers, which would negate
the incentive for them to contribute.

A side effect of this discussion has been to explore the limits of GPL
in the Forth context. The FSF's position on interpreters made my head
hurt. First they say an interpreted program isn't covered by GPL. Then
they say if a GPL'd interpreter dynamically or statically links
functionality from a GPL library (printf for TYPE, for example) and
the interpreted program contains TYPE then that program is covered by
GPL.

Suppose you have a tokenized Forth program that runs on any platform
with a suitable interpreter. The Windows version of the interpreter
was built with commercial tools -- no GPL. The Linux version is built
with a bunch of GPL libraries and the mobile phone version could go
either way. The application neither knows nor cares what platform it's
running on. It's all the same binary. The vendor can avoid the GPL
requirement by saying "This code is not sup****ted under Linux" even
though everyone with an interpreter knows perfectly well it will run.

When you go off the GNU reservation, GPL gets curiouser and curiouser.

Brad