

Ask HN: GPL side-effects of aliasing GCC to LLVM - awinter-py

Does the fact that the &#x27;gcc&#x27; command aliases to clang on my mac laptop make clang a derivative work of GCC?
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dalke
No. The concept of "derivative work" is based on copyright law, which requires
some sort of creativity. A name is not protected by copyright law.

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awinter-py
The gcc command isn't just a name, it's an API. And though I'm sure the FSF
wouldn't troll the legal system by claiming their API is copyrightable, the
federal court system has been pretty split on the question.

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ectoplasm
Why is the gcc command an API?

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awinter-py
It has parameterized inputs and outputs specified by documentation.

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dalke
Ahh, yes, your point is that the entirety of the command-line parameters may
be under copyright, not just the alias.

The FSF would be against this view as it would imply that a GNU system needs
permission from POSIX to implement "ls -l" or "cc -c", or if not something
that simple, then a sufficiently complex/"creative" command-line API.

Therefore even if the court are undecided, the FSF is not going to make a
copyright claim for linking the command 'gcc' to clang.

