From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Stan Shebs <shebs@cygnus.com>
To: bartv@cygnus.co.uk
Cc: ecos-discuss@cygnus.com
Subject: Re: [ECOS] Re: CPU Ports for eCos
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 12:17:00 -0000
Message-id: <199904281917.MAA16164@andros.cygnus.com>
References: <199904281847.TAA16399@sheesh.cygnus.co.uk>
X-SW-Source: 1999-04/msg00040.html

   Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 19:47:41 +0100
   From: Bart Veer <bartv@cygnus.co.uk>

   For those changes to get accepted into the main sources, a copyright
   assignment is needed. The author of any non-trivial changes has to
   assign all rights to those changes to the FSF, thus avoiding any
   confusion about who owns which bits of the compiler. The GPL does not
   impose any obligations in this area, it is a voluntary step, but in
   most cases it is worth doing to avoid the merging problems.

Just to amplify on Bart's valuable comments, this is just a policy of
the FSF, but it's followed pretty strictly.  From time to time people
offer me pieces of code for GDB that still have somebody else's
copyright on them!  This would certainly lead to a unpleasant legal
imbroglio, if we were to incorporate them in GNU code.  So the rule
is: no assignment, no incorporation.

							Stan