This is question of time. [LWN.net]

This is question of time.

Posted Apr 9, 2009 3:51 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
In reply to: This is question of time. by khim
Parent article: Android and Open Source (ABN)

This is kind of amusing. glibc's czar for many years has been Uli Drepper, and for much of that period he and RMS were barely on speaking terms. He even put anti-FSF rants in release tarballs a couple of times, even though the FSF held copyright on the code (because Drepper's employer, which was also not in control of Drepper, had a blanket assignment agreement).

The FSF had tight control of glibc? In their dreams.

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Try to talk some time with Drepper

Posted Apr 9, 2009 14:01 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

He even put anti-FSF rants in release tarballs a couple of times, even though the FSF held copyright on the code (because Drepper's employer, which was also not in control of Drepper, had a blanket assignment agreement).

And what does it prove? The fact that FSF has think skin? Sorry, but FSF controlled what it wanted to control: licensing issues, mostly. Like it does with GCC today. Drepper and RMS "were barely on speaking terms" because RMS flat out refused to do some things Uli felt sensible: include some code with questionable ancestry, give access to the GLibc development to some people who refused to sign agreements with FSF, etc. On the other hand technical direction of Glibc development were never FSF-dictated. Does it constiture "tight control of glibc", or not? This is in the eyes of beholder, but I can gurantee you that neither Sergey Brin nor Larry Page control technical issues of Adroid development while they do certainly worry about legal issues (where to get license for codecs, how to make it possible to play video and not get sued, etc).