[U-Boot] U-book and GPLv3? (fwd)

[Robin Getz]

On Wed 1 Jul 2009 07:45, Richard Stallman pondered:
> 
>     Not to go down a rat hole - but as a normal part of development of
>     non-free software, people use emacs, gcc, and gdb all the time - 
>     you aren't proud of the contributions you made to those projects?
> 
> Yes, I am, but not because they help proprietary software.

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIUseGPLToolsForNF

> As it happens, Bison can also be used to develop non-free programs. This is
> because we decided to explicitly permit the use of the Bison standard
> parser program in Bison output files without restriction. We made the
> decision because there were other tools comparable to Bison which already
> permitted use for non-free programs.

If you aren't happy that they help proprietary software - why not change the 
license to make it so? You recently had the chance to do that with the gcc 
runtime libraries - but you (or the FSF/GCC steering committee) also decided 
not to.

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gcc-exception-faq.html
> However, the FSF decided long ago to allow developers to use GCC's
> libraries to compile any program, regardless of its license.
[snip]
> We decided to permit this because forbidding it seemed likely to 
> backfire, and because using small libraries to limit the use of GCC seemed
> like the tail wagging the dog.

I don't understand the how on one hand there is the "uncompromising attitude 
on ethical issues" (at least according to wikipedia) - but the FSF decides 
the practical considerations for other projects - "the tail wagging the dog".

How is the certification authority issue - whether is is a cell carrier (which 
the GPL3 says is an acceptable certification authority) and the FDA (which 
the GPL3 does not say is acceptable) determine when something is the tail or 
the dog?

I just don't understand the difference?

-Robin