This is the mail archive of the
libc-alpha@sourceware.org
mailing list for the glibc project.
Re: malloc: performance improvements and bugfixes
- From: Jörn Engel <joern at purestorage dot com>
- To: Florian Weimer <fweimer at redhat dot com>
- Cc: Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh dot poyarekar at gmail dot com>, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs dot ucla dot edu>, "GNU C. Library" <libc-alpha at sourceware dot org>, Joern Engel <joern at purestorage dot org>
- Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 09:04:55 -0800
- Subject: Re: malloc: performance improvements and bugfixes
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <1453767942-19369-1-git-send-email-joern at purestorage dot com> <56A6C2E4 dot 7050508 at cs dot ucla dot edu> <20160126010058 dot GI26397 at Sligo dot logfs dot org> <CAAHN_R3=C476ADoAD0cOPJaw4idGFXzcO3_dj1GLfssehhdsvQ at mail dot gmail dot com> <20160126024437 dot GA5745 at Sligo dot logfs dot org> <20160126032122 dot GC5745 at Sligo dot logfs dot org> <20160126062208 dot GA14840 at vapier dot lan> <20160126075358 dot GD5745 at Sligo dot logfs dot org> <56A7420D dot 8010802 at redhat dot com>
So far I counted eight responses to the copyright assignment question.
A useful response, imo, would have included two things:
1. the actual text of the copyright assignment and
2. the FAQ answering most of my questions.
Lack of 1. means we waste time in a discussion without properly defining
what we are discussing. It would be a miracle if that yielded useful
results.
But the lack of 2. is that I find concerning. Am I seriously the first
person that has reservations about signing a copyright assigment? If I
am not and you have answered similar questions before, where did you
collect those answers? Or if I am, does that mean I am the only nutjob
on the planet or am I an example of other people that don't contribute
because of copyright assignment?
Since there doesn't seem to be an FAQ, let me start one.
(Q) Why do you need copyright assignment?
(A) See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
(Q) But there was successful litigation about the Linux kernel, which
doesn't require copyright assignment. Can you elaborate what those
"very substantial procedural advantages" are so I don't have to take
your word for it?
(Q) If I hold all rights for a particular piece of code and assign
copyright to the FSF, under what terms can I use that code myself?
(Q) As the sole author of a piece of code, can I license that code under
a different license like BSD, MIT, etc. after assigning copyright to
the FSF?
(Q) The FSF as the sole copyright holder could relicense code under a
proprietary license. Are there mechanisms in place to prevent such
a scenario beyond "trust us"?
I believe those to be valid questions and reasonable people may well
decide not to do copyright assigment without anwers to them. If you
would rather reverse-engineer my code than answer legal questions, I can
completely understand that. But it would be sad if the primary effect
of the FSF these days was to prevent people from contributing.
Jörn
--
But this is not to say that the main benefit of Linux and other GPL
software is lower-cost. Control is the main benefit--cost is secondary.
-- Bruce Perens