Re: [Fwd: Re: Copyright statement [was: Fix ABI incompatibilities on s390x]]

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Andrew,

> Andrew Cagney wrote:
>
> Is the comment about binutils true?

: From: "Gerhard Tonn" <TON@de.ibm.com>
: 
: Alternatively you could accept patches that fix problems in existing
: code in advance and we provide the copyright statement later. We use 
: this approach for glibc and binutils maintenance. Patches providing
: new functionality are treated seperately and get their own copyright
: statement.

No its not.  Or at least it should not be.  All patches that are
"non-trivial" need a copyright assignment before they can be applied
to binutils.  It is possible that s/390 binutils patches have been
accepted in the past without a copyright assignment, but if so then
this was done in error.

Alternatively the binutils patches could have been considered to be
"trivial" and so accepted without a copyright assignment.

In general however, I believe that all FSF run projects, including
binutils, do need a completed copyright assignment before patches can
be accepted.  The complaint about providing multiple copyright
assignments however:

: it is very time consuming to provide a copyright assignment for
: every single fix.

need not be a problem.  It is quite possible to sign a blanket
copyright assignment, saying that any patch submitted by
person/company FOO to FSF project(s) BLAH shall be considered to have
had its copyright assigned to the FSF.  This is done by lots of
companies.

Cheers
        Nick