Re: include/*/*.h need GPLv3 updates

["Joseph S. Myers" <joseph at codesourcery dot com>]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2010, Nick Clifton wrote:

> Hi Joseph,
> 
> > I noticed that files in include/{aout,coff,elf,nlm,opcode}/ are still
> > generally under GPLv2 - or in some cases GPLv1.
> 
> I am working on fixing this now.
> 
> One thing though - do you think that we need a GPL exception along the same
> lines as the COPYING.RUNTIME exception referenced in some of the header files
> that are shared with GCC ?  (Eg include/dwarf2.h).  If so, should we produce
> our own version which does not reference GCC explicitly, but just allows the
> headers to be used by any brand of compiler ?

The exception is only for files that are included in code built for the 
target.  Nothing in Binutils is built into target libraries, so the 
exception is not relevant to Binutils.  (Some files in include/ may be 
built into bits of libiberty used for the target, or used in libstdc++, 
newlib, etc., but this should not apply to any of those files I mentioned 
above.)

More files in GCC have the exception than logically ought to because many 
target configuration headers are included when building libgcc although 
only a few macros in them are actually relevant to libgcc.  If the libgcc 
build process is cleaned up in future to separate out the host-side and 
target-side GCC configuration, those logically host-side files will have 
the exception removed.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com