Legal use of masm?

[Ran]

Hello,

I have a general question about the use of masm in projects.
Suppose You make a compiler and need to use an assembler.
OK, You download masm and place it under c:\masm s usual.
Then You program Your compiler so to use masm as assembler without changing anything in masm.
Your compiler with masm assembler is working OK.
So You post Your compiler as a free, opensource entity on the Web, but in its manual that You need to download masm
for Your compiler to work.
Is this legal and allowed?

Greetings,
Ran

[vid]

OK, You download masm and place it under c:\masm as usual.

depends from where (in with what licence) you download it. There are many places where MASM can be obtained

[hutch--]

Most of us have heard these questions before but its the same process of stepped delegation. Microsoft licence their tools in various ways from commercial versions to freeware versions but unless you have paid for MASM under a commercial licence you can only use it according to the freeware licence you obtained it under.

Now to be a little blunt, the freeware versions of MASM exclude ANY "Open Source" licencing as such licencing imposes restrictions on how the user uses the Microsoft product and/or the limitations that Microsoft impose on the licence of their freeware.

If you are going to write Open Source software, use open source tools. The GNU assembler (GAS) is a greate tool if you bother to set it up properly, you can use NASM, FASM
POASM and probably a few others as well but MASM is licenced by its owner Microsoft and it is not to be used for Open source projects.

[hutch--]

Have a look at the copyright notice on each of the binaries you have mentioned and you will have answered your own question. Microsoft do not support open source software.

If you havew a licencing enquiry about Microsoft software for Open Source, take it up with the appropriate division of Microsoft.

[sluggy]

Ran,
VS offers several ways for you to plug in extra functionality and use the VS tools and environment. If you make a Managed Package Framework (MPF) plugin then you can freely leverage any version of MASM shipped with the user's copy of VS. But of course you will not be allowed to redistribute any portion of VS itself.