I'm trying to understand how licensing generally works in software development, but this seems to be a rather broad topic that won't have a single straight-forward answer. Hopefully this example is specific enough to illuminate where my confusion on the subject may lie. The GCC compiler is licensed under GNU General Public License v3, summarized here. The wording of this license seems to imply that any work a create using this compiler must include the GCC license, copyright, and link to the source. Am I grossly misinterpreting the intent of the GPL? What is expected as I begin to distribute my own work?
What are the licensing requirements for a program I compile using GCC?
licensing
This would be covered by the GCC Runtime Library Exception. If you use GCC as-is to compile your program, the resulting binary is not covered by the GPLv3 and you can license it under any terms you wish. Your source code is not subject to the GPLv3 merely because you use GCC to compile it to a binary, the only way GCC's license would impact your source code is if you directly copy portions of the GCC code into your source code itself (which, of course, would mean some of the source code isn't yours).