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Re: Tracepoints functionality for local targets


Nicholas Mc Guire wrote:

It is GPL V2 and not assigned to the FSF - it was funded by Siemens AG
(Cooperate Technology) and Im talking to them - but it took 1 year to
get them to release it under the GPL and get permission to release it to
the public so don't expect this to happen any time soon - anyway it is a
supprise to me that it is insufficient to release code under the GPL V2
and frankly if the FSF requires copyright assignment then this is bad news
for free software developers

The FSF requires that people assign the copyright, this keeps the copyright situation clear on the whole project. You have to be very careful in copying code, just because someone somewhere says some code is under the GPL does not make it so, you have to be 100% sure that the person owning the copyright has issued the license, and the way that FSF project does this is to insist on formal copyright assignment. No one is compelled to do such an assignment of course, but for the code to be part of the FSF GNU project, the FSF does require this assignment.

- what reason could I give any other company
to require the same ?

The same reason that has convinced hundreds of individuals and major corporations to assign code. If you assign the code to the FSF, then it gets mainlined into the FSF development sources, which means your patches are continuously tested, and you don't have to deal with reinserting them in every new release.

If Siemens is interested in having this code be mainlined
into the GDB sources, they have to agree to the assignment.
If they are not interested in this, then they don't need
to agree, and unfortunately it won't happen.

On the other hand if the FSF has legitimate reasons
not to accept GPL code as it could lead to restrictions then this would
be the case for any commercial entity as well and be really bad news for
GPL all together.

It's is not a matter of restrictions, just a matter of being careful about copyright and ownership. The GPL is not some magic that removes this requirement for diligence.

So I still hope that the GPL V2 code would be accepted
by the GDB people.

There does need to be an assignment for it to be incorporated



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