[vlc-devel] Project of generation libvlc.lib compatible with MS Visual Studio.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le samedi 12 novembre 2011 09:32:53 Rafaël Carré, vous avez écrit :
> Le Sat, 12 Nov 2011 12:24:57 +0700,
> 
> Sergey Radionov <rsatom at gmail.com> a écrit :
> > Does it mean that, GPL projects can't include any file, that need
> > proprietary programs to build?
> > For expample, than any GPL project can't include Visual Studio
> > solutions(.sln)/projects(.vcproj), and can't build by Visual Studio (or
> > any microsoft compilator)?
> 
> Hmm that's tricky because there are GPL programs that are made only
> with Visual Studio (I think CDex is an example).

That is not tricky. If CDex really does that, then CDex violates its own 
license. Maybe the free-as-in-beer editions of Visual Studio could be 
considered part of the Windows OS... But I guess their EULA forbids binary 
redistribution or restricts it severely in a GPL-incompatible manner (e.g. 
non-commercial use).

You definitely cannot require a commercial version of Visual Studio to make 
redistributable GPL binaries.

(...)
> http://gpl-violations.org/faq/sourcecode-faq.html says:
> 
> Particularly in the case of cross-compilation for embedded platforms, ...
> ...  you have to provide the the exact version of your compiler
> toolchain that was used to create the executables that you have
> distributed. Please note that in most cases this will be GNU GCC, which is
> itself GPL licensed, so the GPL obligations will in turn apply to the
> toolchain, and you must release the complete corresponding source code to
> it as well.
> 
> 
> But I would say it's OK to provide Visual Studio projects in practice,
> and if someone screams propose them to port the build system to mingw ;)

Providing project files is OK. Distributing binaries is, I think, not.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/
http://fi.linkedin.com/in/remidenis