On 23 Mar 1999, Henning Makholm wrote: > Mr. Bar does not need to read through to section 2 - the second > paragraph of section 0 is enough: > > | Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not > | covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of > | running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program > | is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the > | Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). > | Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. > > Now, a makefile is essentially a program written in the 'make' > language. Mr. Bar is allowed to run this program and use it to turn > his own source into his own executable. That does not give mr. Foo > any sort of intellectual rights to the executable, since the > executable is not a "derived" from anything mr. Foo wrote. > > Note that "derived" is not defined by the GPL; it is a standard > term from intellectual property law. [...]
[ This discussion is interesting ]. Do you mean that #include <foobar.h> should be considered as mere "use" of a header file; the same way that we "use" gcc to compile a program? I think we should draw the line somwehere between what we call "source code" and what we call "compiler tools". So the question would be: Is a header file more likely to be considered to be in the "source code" side or in the "compiler tools" side? [ In the example, a Makefile is certainly a program written in the 'make' language, but for our purposes, it is also part of the "source" for the program itself ]. Thanks. -- "c1679991bd2a2bd05475c380f5a825f5" (a truly random sig)
