Introduction

GNU Software

The TinyCOBOL compiler is licensed under the GPL license and the TinyCOBOL run-time library is licensed under the LGPL license. For more information about these licenses, see the GNU website at http://www.gnu.org

Licensing

The TinyCOBOL run-time library is distributed under the LGPL, and does not impose license restrictions on compiled binaries.

The Berkeley DB is needed to run TinyCOBOL. Note that only Berkeley DB version 1.85.x and 1.86 are released under the LGPL. More recent releases of Berkeley DB have a more restrictive license requiring you to release your source code with your executables if you distribute your programs. If you use a more recent release of Berkeley DB and you do not want to release your source code, you must purchase a license from Sleepycat Software. See the licensing requirements at <http://www.sleepycat.com>.

TinyCOBOL Language Standards

ISO IEC 1989:1995: Programming Languages – COBOL.

ISO IEC 1989/AMD1:1992: Programming Languages – COBOL. Amendment 1 – Intrinsic function module.

ANSI X3.23-1985: Programming Languages – COBOL.

ANSI X23a-1998: Programming Languages – COBOL. Amendment 1: Intrinsic function module.

X/Open XPG3: COBOL programming language extensions.

How You Can Contribute to the TinyCOBOL Project

The TinyCOBOL project can use your experience. The workplace for TinyCOBOL is sourceforge. The project can use developers, testers and technical writers. You don't need a lot of experience.

The easiest way to start is by opening the TinyCOBOL home page, http://www.tinycobol.org and then opening the mailing list link. Subscribe to the Tiny-cobol-users mailing list, spend some time looking through the archives to see what we people are doing, and then send note to introduce yourself.

Where to Get Help

The best source for help is the TinyCOBOL mailing list described above. This is a very active user list. Please check this user manual and the TinyCOBOL.org website before submitting questions to the user group. When sending a question to the user group, consider giving the name and version of your operating system, the TinyCOBOL version number.

Where to Post TinyCOBOL Bugs

Two places are available for posting TinyCOBOL bugs.

The TinyCOBOL bug tracker is available in sourceforge.net at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=383&atid=100383

Bugs can also be posted in the TinyCOBOL users mailing list described above. An execution log can often be helpful. On most systems, an execution log can be generated by using the script command as follows:

$ script

$ [run your command or commands]

$ exit

This will generate a log file named typescript.. Attach typescript to your post in the TinyCOBOL users mailing list.

Note to BSD Users About make

BSD make is different from make on Linux and does not work the same. Where this User Manual refers to make, substitute gmake.

2004-01-27T13:32:26