On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 07:39:56PM -0700, Marc Alff wrote: > I have some questions regarding GCOV, which is part of GCC. > I hope this is the right place (if not, suggestions are welcome).
Your questions are basically legal, and we don't really have the competence on this list to address them. It is my *understanding* that the GPL does not apply to file formats, and that the FSF does not object to use of its file formats by others. No promises on that, though. If you read the gcov source code in an attempt to understand the file format, you risk inadvertantly creating a derivative work. It is copyright law, not the GPL, that defines what a derivative work is. There are standard ways of doing reverse engineering to avoid that risk, and what is required differs depending on what country you live/work in. You could contact the FSF to get more reassurance; since you plan to dual-license, I assume that they will be friendly. There's no guarantee that the gcov formats won't change.
