Subject: Hypothetical sensitivity of compiler to legal status of source code? (was: Re: gcc question)

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 21:06:19 +0300 (IDT)

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Orr Dunkelman wrote:

> The code is closed under some legal agreements, so I cannot release it,
> neither send gcc a bug-report.

The possibility that gcc is somehow sensitive to the legal status of
the code in question does not have to be ruled out.

How this might happen (DISCLAIMER:  this is a far-fetched wild
speculation):
There may be certain C/C++ language phrases, which are not generally
known, and which were discovered by some programmer and incorporated only
in proprietary code.  Those phrases would then become known only to
programmers, who saw the code under NDA.  Those phrases would trigger bugs
in gcc compiler.  Due to the proprietary nature of the code in question,
those bugs would not be reported to the gcc developers.

In other words, coding styles used solely in proprietary code might
trigger bugs in gcc.  Hence, the sensitivity of gcc to the legal status of
the code which it tries to compile.
                                             --- Omer
There is no IGLU Cabal.  Once it was found that software packages have
telepathic abilities of their own, people ran away from computers.
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