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What does “need” mean? I think it would be pretty messed up for browsers to ship a way to legally embed GPL code within closed-source binaries.

In a sense, though, that feature does exist — it’s called an HTTP request.



Or IPC? Does WebAssembly have something like Web Workers?


Not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure you can’t circumvent the GPL just by running the code in a different thread.


It would be a different process, not a different thread. For example executing GCC from a proprietary IDE doesn't seem to be a problem.


It's a problem if your IDE is designed to work only with gcc. It's not a problem, if it could work with any compiler and gcc is just one of the options.


My understanding is that it matters whether the GPL software is distributed with your program. If your IDE installed gcc, you would have to license it as GPL — even if it also installed other compilers. (It would be fine for your IDE to use a preexisting gcc installation obtained in some other fashion, though).




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