Tobias Oberstein <tobias.oberstein@xxxxxx> writes: > > library is never part of gcc. gcc itself imposes no restrictions on > > code compiled with profiling. Any such restrictions come from > > somewhere else. > > but the profiling library has to be called and for that calls > there has to be code generated automatically isn't it? who > inserts that code? gcc? then what about the copyright of > those injected calls to an external (system provided, non-GPL'ed) > library? injecting a _single_ line of GPL'ed code would be > enough to trigger license terms proliferation or not? There is nothing special about profiling in this regard, of course. This amounts to saying that all code generated by the compiler is under the GPL, because the generated code is constructed by GPL code. I think that is pretty far-fetched. I've never heard anybody seriously propose that. The direct copying is essentially of strings like "call" into the generated assembler file. All GPL claims rely on the notion of derived work under copyright law; I think it would be pretty difficult to claim that copying a string like "call" makes the generated file a derived work. Ian
