Alternatives to gcc (was Re: gcc 4.3: when will it becomestandard compiler?)

[Garrett Cooper]

On Feb 1, 2009, at 9:13 AM, Gavin Atkinson wrote:

> On Sat, 31 Jan 2009, Pedro F. Giffuni wrote:
>> --- On Sat, 1/31/09, Mark Linimon <linimon at lonesome.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 01:08:54PM -0800, Pedro F. Giffuni wrote:
>>>> The effort didn't go far enough. Why haven't we removed GNU  
>>>> readline ?
>>>
>>> Probably either because someone hasn't written a BSD-licensed one,  
>>> or
>>> someone hasn't done the work to test-compile src and ports on all  
>>> the
>>> appropriate architectures.
>>
>> Wrong on both:
>>
>> - libedit has a readline compatibility mode that has replaced GNU  
>> readline in the other BSDs.
>> - If you look in the archives you will find patches.
>>
>> If there really was any effort to remove GPL'd stuff from the tree  
>> it missed this big time: GNU readline is a library under the GPL  
>> (not LGPL), it should be dead long ago.
>
> As far as I can see, in the base system, there are five things  
> linked against readline which would not otherwise be under the GPL:
>
> kadmin, ktutil, gvinum, ntpq, ntpdc
>
> Of these, gvinum is a surprise.  I'm not sure what it needs readline  
> for, and cannot see why this isn't able to use the copy of libedit  
> in the base system.  ntpq and ntpdc are being built with the option  
> to use libreadline commented out, so I'm not sure why they are being  
> linked with it.  I don't know about the Kerberos programs, but given  
> they are contrib I suspect that may be a reaon why they are still  
> using libedit rather than readline.
>
> I may be wrong (feel free to correct me) but I can't see what the  
> real issue is with having readline in the base, if only code that is  
> already GPL is linking against it.  Obviously it would be good if  
> the five utilities above could be linked against libedit rather than  
> readline.
>
> Gavin

	readline is also GPLv2, not LGPLv2.1, so AFAICT any changes that  
vendors make to any sources with readline support linked in would  
potentially force them to expose their proprietary secrets IF the  
copyright owner sued for GPLv2 infringement.
	Welcome to the wonderful world of FSF...
-Garrett