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Re: Documentation etc


Andrew,

Andrew Pinski wrote:
On Apr 18, 2004, at 08:28, Etienne Gagnon wrote:

So, if I understand correctly, the main motivation for seeking
copyright assignment is so that the FSF can change the license
to a strictger one.


No, sorry but the assignment is so that it is easier to keep track
of "who" owns what code in the case where it is assigned over to
the FSF, you do not have to keep track at all.  Your code is
protected by someone who knows about free software.

I will not assign my copyright to a foreign organization. I, as a UQAM professor which respect its students copyright on their work, will not ask my students to assign their code to a non-Canadian organization. UQAM can help me with protecting my copyright. This is enough for me.

As for Libffi, anyway, what's there to "protect", with current license?
Very little.  Changing the license to GPL+Excp would be different, of
course, but I oppose the change.  GPL+excp is stricter than current
license.

I think I should know something about the "Classpath exception"; I am
actually the one who wrote it's current version (with much help from
RMS)...

Why?  There is no big difference in the way the current license can be used
and GPL+exception.

Yes there is a HUGE difference. I can take libffi's source code and mix and match it within Apache's source code. I could not do the same if the license was GPL+excp. The exception only applies on *linking*, not on mixing source code (in the same files). Please re-read the exception, if you don't see this.

This settles the question for me:  I really think that libffi should
migrate off the GCC repository, to protect it, on the shorter and
longer term, against any license restrictions, and allow
for contributions without copyright assignment.  Also, it will assess
libffi's independence of control from the GCC Steering Committee.


Please see http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libffi-discuss/2004/msg00009.html for my point of view on copyright assignment.

I think the point here is that libffi is getting bigger and bigger and
the most people who are contributing to libffi are mainly GCC developers who
want to make sure that they sources are safe and not really have to deal with
the copyright violations themselves which is the reason behind assigning it
to someone else in the first place.

If you only feel safe with FSF copyrighted code, be careful not to run any code such the Linux kernel, or even GCJ (as it uses code not copyrighted by FSF, such as fdlibm).

PS this is turning into a political discussion instead of a technical one.

I am not currently allowed to contribute any code into libffi unless GCC SC says it's OK... Given my stand on copyright assignment, they'll probably say no. This is something that has to be resolved. I have seen no good argument justifying: 1- Changing license to a stricter one. 2- Refusing contributions from people like me.

Etienne

--
Etienne M. Gagnon, Ph.D.             http://www.info.uqam.ca/~egagnon/
SableVM:                                       http://www.sablevm.org/
SableCC:                                       http://www.sablecc.org/


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