Re: GNU make distribution with proprietary products

[Paul Smith]

On Wed, 2010-08-04 at 15:42 -0700, tom honermann wrote:
> I am not seeking legal advice, comments about the legality or
> ethicality of such aggregated works, or comments regarding
> requirements of the GPL licenses.  I'm looking for companies that are
> distributing such aggregated works as examples I can use to show that 
> such aggregation is being done by other companies without (presumably)
> legal repercussions (which assumes that the copyright holders are
> aware of the aggregated work and believe that the use does not
> infringe on the requirements of the GPL)

Hi Tom.  The FSF is the sole copyright holder for all of GNU make.  In a
pinch you can write to them and ask them about it; I know that others
have done this in the past.

At the moment I'm not aware of any proprietary aggregations including
GNU make (which doesn't mean there aren't any--the GPL does not require
anyone to notify the FSF about this).  However, back in the 1990's,
Atria (now owned by IBM) distributed the source code control tool
ClearCase containing a modified version of GNU make as a supplement to
their build utility, clearmake.

That distribution included the binary version of the modified GNU make,
along with the complete source code to GNU make, including the changes
that they made.  They did discuss this with the FSF and they were not
required to release the source code to clearmake, even though clearmake
invoked this modified GNU make (using typical system(3) or
fork(2)/exec(2) methods).

After a few years they decided to stop doing that (for their own
reasons, not legal ones) and instead reimplemented the GNU make
functionality they wanted to emulate directly in clearmake, without
using any GNU make code of course.


I understand you were asking only for examples and not legal opinions,
so I won't offer any.

Cheers!

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>          Find some GNU make tips at:
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