Re: macOS 64-bit

[Marnen Laibow-Koser]

On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 5:01 PM David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:

> marnen <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > My understanding from other posts here (correct me if I'm wrong) is
> > that a major (legal, not technical) roadblock for doing this with GUB
> > is the licensing requirement that seems to require that Xcode be run
> > on Apple hardware, and the lack of consistent availability of Apple
> > hardware for builds.
>
> The GPL 3.0 does not allow additional restrictions such as requiring
> certain hardware.  Availability is not an issue, the restrictions are.
>
[...]

Xcode is not governed by GPL3, and AFAIK it's the only component at issue
here whose license stipulates particular hardware.  As far as I can tell
from the license agreement at
https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/xcode.pdf (same
version as in my copy of Xcode 10.2.1) , this restriction does not apply to
binaries built with Xcode.

§2.2 of the license agreement, in fact, specifically *exempts* the macOS
SDK from the Apple-branded hardware restriction, so that even that is not a
concern.

So my reading of the Xcode license is that there is no Apple hardware
restriction for a Mac application built with Xcode (things may be different
for iOS, but that's not what we're discussing here).  In that case, as long
as the Xcode build itself is run on Apple hardware, there should be no
legal obstacle in building a Mac application with Xcode for distribution
under GPL3. And in fact, there *do* exist Mac GUI applications (such as
Cyberduck, https://g.iterate.ch/scm/iterate/cyberduck.git ) that are
distributed under GPL3 and built with Xcode, for whatever that's worth.


> --
> David Kastrup
>

Best,
-- 
Marnen Laibow-Koser
address@hidden
http://www.marnen.org