From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: law@redhat.com
To: Joe Buck <jbuck@synopsys.COM>
Cc: jsm28@cam.ac.uk (Joseph S. Myers), mrs@windriver.com (mike stump), rth@redhat.com, dewar@gnat.com, gcc@gcc.gnu.org
Subject: Re: Loop unroll fixes 
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 09:31:00 -0000
Message-id: <1160.1001349207@localhost.localdomain>
References: <200109191827.LAA19330@atrus.synopsys.com>
X-SW-Source: 2001-09/msg00921.html

  In message < 200109191827.LAA19330@atrus.synopsys.com >you write:
  > Joseph Myers writes:
  > > A harder case might be where the bug was shown up by a small testcase fro
  > m
  > > a proprietary testsuite (see e.g.  
  > > <URL: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/1998-11/msg00257.html >).  Do we
  > > have any legal guidance on what is and is not safe to do in such cases?
  > 
  > We got some legal advice from Eben Moglen (FSF counsel) on test suite
  > issues.  We could perhaps ask him for advice on how to legally create a
  > test case that we can distribute.  But the following procedure is
  > generally considered safe:
  > 
  > programmer A, with access to the test case, writes up a report on what
  > the test is doing and what the failure is.
  > 
  > (for the extremely paranoid: lawyer reads report, sprinkles holy water,
  > but probably unneeded in this case)
  > 
  > programmer B uses the report to write a test case that shows the same
  > failure.
Right.  In fact, this kind of discipline (IMHO) would generally lead to 
more thorough bug analysis and hopefully fewer incorrect patches.

jeff