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use of ctags

Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 1:54 am
by just thinking..
much of your application's power (code completion, class browser..) comes from using ctags, which is of course gpl'd code. Aren't you thus required to distribute your application under the gpl?

Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 6:00 am
by jussij
much of your application's power (code completion, class browser..) comes from using ctags, which is of course gpl'd code. Aren't you thus required to distribute your application under the gpl?
Before using ctags I read the GPL license to make sure there was nothing in the license that restricted the shipment of GPL with commercial software and from what I read there are no such restrictions.

From what I read the GPL insists that I do not impinge on your freedom, by restricting access to the source code. But since I make no changes to the ctags source code, the source code available from the ctags home page provides you with the all the freedom that the license demands.

To illustrate this fact you can even download the ctags.exe from the ctags home page, rename it to xtags.exe and Zeus will be none the wiser :)

Now if Zeus itself contained any GPL code then that would be a totally different story. But this is not the case and Zeus is 100% home grown C/C++ :)

Cheers Jussi