Re: Is this circumvention of the GPL?

[James Michael DuPont]

>     That is what was done by the VCG project by
>     Mr Sander. 
>     The GCC has routines for outputing into VCG in
> the
>     compiler itself, but it's source code is not
> open! 
> 
> I cannot clearly understand the facts from this
> description.  I can
> only point out that whether the source is "open" is
> not a relevant
> question to the GPL.
> 
Sorry, I know that open is not the same as free.
I did not mean to be as confusing as I was.

I mean that the compiler has routines for formatting
RTLS into various graphs formats.
All of the graph-formats are read by graph layout
tools. The graph layout tools are generally not free.
The VCG was interesting to me because it promised to
be free, upon closer inspection it seems that it was
not. 
I would like to see a free graph layout tool that can
be distributed with the compiler, many free software
tools say to use davinci or use dotty, but they are
not free software.
Graph layout tools really help the understanding of
compiler optimisations and many other parts of the
compiler. It would really help the GNU project if VCG
was completly free. 

A port of the AISee front end to GNOME and the freeing
of all the changes that were made to the GPLed
software would be a radical step, but the best thing
IMHO.

Mike

=====
James Michael DuPont

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