Redistributing Pelles C Command Line Tools

[Serkan]

Hi

Pelles C is freeware for any use: personal, commercial, etc.
Pelles C can be freely distributed, but it can not be sold.

This explanation is not clear to me , because it sounds like IDE&Tools with installer
so, i have the following question

Can i redistribute Pelles C commandline tools along with my application ,at least (C compiler, resource compiler and  linker)
The application is commercial but it is not a code editor or an IDE like Pelles C or similar , so i am not making a derivative work
purpose of the subject application is build an application from precompiled static libraries and pre-written C code
so, end-user selects the options on a wizard and my application builds an exe for end-user

It is more like a  xyz to exe converter

Thanks.

[CommonTater]

Hi

Pelles C is freeware for any use: personal, commercial, etc.
Pelles C can be freely distributed, but it can not be sold.

This explanation is not clear to me , because it sounds like IDE&Tools with installer
so, i have the following question

Can i redistribute Pelles C commandline tools along with my application ,at least (C compiler, resource compiler and  linker)
The application is commercial but it is not a code editor or an IDE like Pelles C or similar , so i am not making a derivative work
purpose of the subject application is build an application from precompiled static libraries and pre-written C code
so, end-user selects the options on a wizard and my application builds an exe for end-user

It is more like a  xyz to exe converter

Thanks.

I would suggest you send a PM via this board to Pelle and ask him directly.  It's his software and it's under his control...

[Serkan]

i have sent a PM to him on December 09 , but i could not get any reply
in the meantime i did some reseach about the commandline tools and i realized that i can not use C Compiler
due to its licence restrictions

but i noticed that i only need POLINK tool so i will compile my codes to OBJ files with Visual Studio and link with POLINK if available
i have come across many websites which are mentioning about POLINK , and people use it for several purposes
i am assuming that POLINK is redistributable ,i think PureBasic uses it as well

if i will not receive a feedback from him in the next few weeks then , i will accept the following sentence as 'i can redistribute POLINK via giving credit to its author & website'

Pelles C is freeware for any use: personal, commercial, etc. Pelles C can be freely distributed

if you think that this is not correct then please tell me , i do not want to violate any licence or anyone's rights

Thanks

[CommonTater]

Pelle is seldom active on this forum anymore.  About the only time we hear from him is when there's an update in progress.  (and yes that does cause some concern)

Pelles C is privately owned Freeware... which means that the author (Pelle in this case) does retain the right to control his product's distribution.  I would interpret your key sentence as meaning the overall product rather than it's component parts. You may wish, instead, to try locating a suitable compiler and linker under the GNU public license such as GCC or MinGW (and quite a few others) that may be more compliant with what you want to do...
 
Another course of action to consider is to integrate a single pass compiler such as TCC (Tiny C) directly into your own application... Several of these are "open source" (which obviously implies "public domain") and could conceivably be made into DLLs or even be included directly into your own code... 

Finally, if these building blocks of yours are stable enough to link into an application as .obj files, you could concevably build them as DLLs and have your parent application load and use them at run time... in this case you aren't distributing anyone's compiler or linker, what goes out the pipe is all yours and thus, no licensing issues at all.

I wish you good luck with your project... but in your shoes I wouldn't be waiting for an answer from Pelle.
 

[jj2007]

Several of these are "open source" (which obviously implies "public domain")

What is the difference between open source software and software that is in the public domain?

When software is in the public domain, users have unrestricted use of the software. While the phrase  “open source code” denotes that the creator is making the source code available to all requestors but under a license that sets forth the parameters of its use.  Therefore, “open source” software is still licensed to a user under the terms and conditions of the specific open source license arrangement.

[CommonTater]

Several of these are "open source" (which obviously implies "public domain")

What is the difference between open source software and software that is in the public domain?

When software is in the public domain, users have unrestricted use of the software. While the phrase  “open source code” denotes that the creator is making the source code available to all requestors but under a license that sets forth the parameters of its use.  Therefore, “open source” software is still licensed to a user under the terms and conditions of the specific open source license arrangement.

Trust me on this... regardless of fancy license agreements, vetted by lawyers and published broadly on the internet, the minute you release source code for any of your projects they've gone "public domain" since *nobody* even bothers to read, much less obey your licensing conditions.

Wanna guess how much money that's cost me over the years?

[Bitbeisser]

Several of these are "open source" (which obviously implies "public domain")

What is the difference between open source software and software that is in the public domain?

When software is in the public domain, users have unrestricted use of the software. While the phrase  “open source code” denotes that the creator is making the source code available to all requestors but under a license that sets forth the parameters of its use.  Therefore, “open source” software is still licensed to a user under the terms and conditions of the specific open source license arrangement.

Trust me on this... regardless of fancy license agreements, vetted by lawyers and published broadly on the internet, the minute you release source code for any of your projects they've gone "public domain" since *nobody* even bothers to read, much less obey your licensing conditions.

Wanna guess how much money that's cost me over the years?

If you have clearly marked that source with an appropriate license, you can recover this money as this would be a clear copyright and license violation. The FSF is one option to help you with this...

Something has to be explicitly declared to be "public domain" in order to be used without having to pay attention to copyright and license...

Ralf

[CommonTater]

Something has to be explicitly declared to be "public domain" in order to be used without having to pay attention to copyright and license...

Yes Ralf... I know this.  But have you ever tried going after an 18 year old studen who copied your code and handed it in as homework?  Lawyers bills ... $5,000 (for starts)... recovered money $0. 

[frankie]

The point is that when you publish your code it can be interpreted  more generally as 'public disclosure', in legal language, unless they copied exactly your code character by character, the concepts you implicitly described are public unless covered by patent.
When applying for a patent the bigger part of costs is the research of 'prior art' which is mainly 'articles' that describes in whole or in part the process (I know enough about that  )
In plain words it is always difficult to get out of a claim....

[Serkan]

@CommonTater

i am working on this project for more than 2 years , i have checked almost all compilers around and they are mostly licenced under GPL
and public word in GPL does not mean public domain and it is very restrictive on redistribution in any case
simply your application must be open source and free for non-commercial use

and your building Dll suggestion is pointless for my case
becasue there are loads of modules and making them as DLLs is not a big problem but like i said there are loads of them and if you build a complex application then there will be a dll hell , imagine an exe with 30 DLLs ,plus i have to (static) link a custom liblary with all DLLs that is around 450KB
this will increase overall size alot

actually dll option is not a problem for me at all , but end user might not like this
building process of my application was based on patching a prebuilt exe and there are some alternative ways to do it
but i thought linking object files is best option for me, i can implement build process in other ways too,so i do not have to use linking option

i will wait for a response from Pelle

Thanks for your interest

[CommonTater]

i will wait for a response from Pelle

Thanks for your interest

I wish I could be more help but I can't speak for Pelle... (and wouldn't even if I could)

Good luck with your project... it sounds interesting.

[jj2007]

You might check the WLink license.