Re: disruptors of & inventory of Ada compilers and latest their era of ISO8652 compliance

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Friday, May 18, 2018 at 9:06:19 AM UTC-5, R R wrote:
> On Thursday, May 17, 2018 at 8:42:55 PM UTC+2, Niklas Holsti wrote:
> > On 18-05-17 18:56 , Luke A. Guest wrote:
> > >
> > > See previous discussions about taking gcc’s ir and the ramifications of
> > > doing so, it makes the resultant code gplv3. It’s in the gcc faq and
> > > licence.
> > 
> > Firefox cannot find the word "intermediate" or the (upper-case) acronym 
> > "IR" in the GPL FAQ at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html. The 
> > word "representation" occurs once, in a different context.
> > 
> > Ditto for the GPLv3 itself, at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt.
> > 
> > If you extract a source-to-IR "front compiler" from the full gcc, of 
> > course that front-compiler itself remains under GPL. But I do not 
> > believe that IR text generated by that compiler would automatically fall 
> > under the GPL, no more than machine code generated by the full gcc 
> > automatically falls under the GPL.
> > 
> > Please provide a link or quotation to support your claim.
> 
> I remember discussions (from the 90ies ?) that it would be possible to generate source code from the IR. If that generated source code had not any copyright (ie GPL), you would have a GPL-strip compiler GPL C/Ada-code to C/Ada-code without any copyright. 
> 
> R

But GPLv3's “Target Code” clauses were devised to overtly prohibit utilizing such techniques; the resulting IR and downstream derivative works are all GPLv3 (regardless of the original source code's license) if a GPLv3ed toolchain was utilized to produce the IR.

Btw, under nearly all licenses other than GPLv3, LGPLv3, and AGPLv3, this particular technique would still result in a derivative work of the original source code under U.S. copyright law, which would mean that the generated-from-IR source code would still have the exact same rights-to-copy license as the original source code (e.g., GPLv2, MIT, Apache, public domain), unless the IR was produced by a GPLv3 toolchain in which the original source code's license is overridden by GPLv3 instead.  (GPLv3 increased the strength of the viral spread via the “Target Code” clauses.  Likewise with the Runtime Exception for GPLv3, because the Runtime Exception revokes itself in certain situations, one of which is IR.)