Official compiler

[Chris Wright via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 22:41:46 +0000, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

> On Thursday, 18 February 2016 at 22:22:57 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:
>> With copyright, the fact that you created yours on your own is
>> sufficient defense, assuming the courts agree. If by sheer coincidence
>> you come up with code identical to what's in GCC, but you can show that
>> you didn't take the code from GCC, you're in the clear.
> 
> And how are you going to show that? You can't, because it is widespread.

You testify it under oath, and you hope you look honest. You can show a 
lack of GCC source code on your home computer, possibly.

>> Patents, well, you're infringing even if you didn't refer to any other
>> source. But if you did look at another source, especially if you looked
>> in the patent database, you open yourself up to increased damages.
> 
> There are no damages for GCC.

There are damages for patent infringement. There are higher damages for 
willful infringement.

The patent doesn't have to be held by the FSF or a contributor to GCC. 
There might be a patent troll that sued a third party regarding GCC. And 
thanks to how software patents generally are, it'd probably be regarding 
something that most C/C++ compilers need to implement and the most 
obvious implementation for that feature.

If Walter had read the GCC source code from an infringing version after 
that case came to light, that's the sort of thing that can bring on 
triple damages. It depends on relative lawyer quality, of course, but 
it's much harder for the plaintiffs if there's no indication that you've 
accessed the GCC source code.