On Fri, 2026-08-28 at 13:14 +0000, mr. anand tryambakrao akhare wrote: > mr. anand tryambakrao akhare
> I created new software which is same as make utility. It has some > additional features. When I started on it, I thought of make kernel > related feature for it and so I thought I will make it open source. If you reuse more than a very small amount of any GPL licensed source code (e.g. more than four lines, even comments) you have the legal obligation to release the source code as soon as you redistribute a binary. For legal details (I am not a lawyer) consult fsf.org or your favorite lawyer. If you code all yourself without looking inside any GPL licensed source code you might keep your tool proprietary software and try to sell it. The issue is then to find paying customers. In addition of the previous tools I did mention (eg scons, ninja-build, GNU make enhanced with GNU guile) look also into https://github.com/ocaml-omake/ and https://bazel.build/ Of course (for C and C++) https://ccache.dev/ is also relevant. For distributed builds (of big software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distcc and https://github.com/icecc/icecream are also relevant. If your builder tool targets the build of huge software (ten millions lines of source code or more in thousands of source files) consider maybe generating ad-hoc plugins to accelerate the build. For that specialized purpose https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/ or https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/jit/ could be relevant, if you want to use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_evaluation You mention the Linux kernel as a (good) example of big software. It has a specific tool to configure it (make menuconfig if I remember well). Of course GNU autoconf (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoconf ...) is also relevant. > I just wanted to check if I have any obligation like legal or moral > or ethical to make it open source like gpl2 or gpl3. My opinion is definitely yes. But I am a long time open source enthusiast (member of april.org in France). See https://arxiv.org/abs/1109.0779 and my old (plugin related) contributions to the GCC compiler. If you keep your software tool closed source, who will test it and why and how (given the existence of many mature open source tools)? -- Basile STARYNKEVITCH <[email protected]> 8 rue de la Faïencerie http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/ 92340 Bourg-la-Reine https://github.com/bstarynk France https://github.com/RefPerSys/RefPerSys https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0908-5250
