GCC unplugged [LWN.net]

GCC unplugged

Posted Nov 20, 2007 9:37 UTC (Tue) by intgr (subscriber, #39733)
Parent article: GCC unplugged

One very obvious problem I see with the current state of GCC is that, to contribute to the GCC
compiler, you must assign your copyrights to Free Software Foundation. Not everyone is happy
to work for free and then give up his/her copyrights; but that's just part of the story.

For example, the GDC (D programming language frontend for GCC) project doesn't stand a chance
of being merged upstream, despite being fully GPLed, because the front-end is taken from
Digital Mars's GPLed code and retains Digital Mars copyrights.

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GCC unplugged

Posted Nov 20, 2007 10:24 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

The copyright assignment requirement really *is* worthwhile and really *does* have advantages,
not least that GCC can be relicensed when needed (which the FSF recently took advantage of).

It would be rather silly if flagship FSF projects couldn't be relicensed to use the latest
versions of the FSF's own licenses.

(In any case, you lose no rights to speak of with the copyright assignment anyway: you get a
grantback which gives you back the rights you'd have as a copyright owner anyway, including
the right to release your own work under whatever license you choose, free or not.)

Also, the majority of GCC maintainers don't work for free (either they're paid by people who
need GCC --- Linux distros, Apple, et seq --- or they run consultancies based on adapting and
porting GCC for people --- e.g. CodeSourcery). This has been true for a *long* time: not quite
for all of GCC's existence, but certainly for most of it.

Bullshit

Posted Nov 20, 2007 22:47 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

If the language is important enough FSF accepts even non-GPLed code in GCC. For example GCC 4.3 will include eclipse's java compiler (see here). Now that's 100% true that FSF does not like to do this if there are any other sane choice, but if D was as popular as Java it'd be no-brainer.

But that's not the case: D is rarely (if ever used) and it does not look like anyone will do something terribly big and exciting with D (like KDE or MESA). So the idea is to piggyback on GCC's popularity to raise popularity of D. In this case it looks sensible from FSF to require copyright assignment: why should it promote something it can not control ?

Bullshit

Posted Nov 21, 2007 2:52 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

RMS also agreed to leave the GNU Java class code at GPLv2 or later, precisely to help with free Java (allow the GNU code to be mixed with Sun code). He can be stubborn, but he's more of a pragmatist than he is given credit for.

Bullshit

Posted Nov 29, 2007 10:18 UTC (Thu) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]

>>So the idea is to piggyback on GCC's popularity to raise popularity of D. In this case it
looks sensible from FSF to require copyright assignment: why should it promote something it
can not control ?<<

Because helping D would allow to make better Free Software?
That's a Win/Win proposition IMHO.

While D is still young, it has the potential to allow programmers to make better SW than C++
(for an equivalent effort).