Re: Where is GDB going

[Quality Quorum <qqi at world dot std dot com>]

On 25 Feb 2001, Per Bothner wrote:

> Quality Quorum <qqi@world.std.com> writes:
> 
> > I agree that there should be a line in the sand, however, currently 
> > it is way far to the left. If people have intellectual property and 
> > trade secrets hardwired into their hardware, then they should be allowed
> > to protect these secrets from disclosure by writing closed library 
> > obscuring details of their stuff.
> 
> Of course they should be.  RMS would agree 100%.  But you're missing
> the point: if people make that choice, they have no right to expect a
> free ride from Free Software.  What does Free Software (or the World
> for that matter) gain by making it too easy for people to keep their
> intellectual property secret?  The whole point of GNU to encourage
> openness, not trade secrets.

I do not think that I am missing the point. So, far GNU stuff was 
an enabling technology allowing a bunch of a small guys to pool
resources and provide ourselves with tools and systems where big 
dogs for years did not provide anything suitable and always overpriced.
However, most of the people who use GNU tools in embedded space 
are doing it to earn living off their PROPRIETARY applications being
developed/debugged with GNU tools. If GNU is going to become a
social engineering tool (as you just confirmed) it is going to die - 
this is just an opinion of information age's joe-six-pack, I am
interested in any more discussions on this topic.


> Anyway, discussion about the morality of the GPL are not appropriate
> to this mailing list.  Concrete questions about the licensing
> implications of using Gdb remote stubs, probably ok, I guess.

It was you idea to discuss this matter under this angle. I had 
a very simple question I would like to be either firmly confirmed or 
firmly denied. If I have i386-stub.c (which is public domain) linked with
my evil-proprietary-system then it will be breach of GPL 3.0 to debug
my evil-proprietary-system with GDB using GDB remote protocol.

So, far it was confirmed, while not that firmly.


> 	--Per Bothner

Thanks,

Aleksey