Re: Original commit history for gfortran

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Toon Moene]

On 06/18/2011 12:12 PM, Toon Moene wrote:

> On 06/18/2011 05:05 AM, Christopher Bergström wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> We're in the process of considering contributing to gfortran for a
>> special project, but when we started to vet the codebase we hit a bump
>> in lack of commit history.
>
> Additional information is here:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcc-g95
>
> The above gives you the history after the split from the g95 project:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/g95
>
> in January 2003.
>
The original commit by Paul Brook of the gcc-g95 repository contents to 
the GCC repository is here:

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/2003-07/msg01087.html

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.org/~toon/; weather: http://moene.org/~hirlam/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran#news

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

["C. Bergström"]

  On 06/18/11 05:16 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
> On 06/18/2011 12:12 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
>
>> On 06/18/2011 05:05 AM, Christopher Bergström wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> We're in the process of considering contributing to gfortran for a
>>> special project, but when we started to vet the codebase we hit a bump
>>> in lack of commit history.
>>
>> Additional information is here:
>>
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcc-g95
>>
>> The above gives you the history after the split from the g95 project:
>>
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/g95
>>
>> in January 2003.
>>
> The original commit by Paul Brook of the gcc-g95 repository contents 
> to the GCC repository is here:
>
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/2003-07/msg01087.html
>
Ok I pulled the gcc-g95 and g95 projects

gcc-g95 starts with this..

revision 1.1.1.1
date: 2003/01/06 21:04:20;  author: paul_brook;  state: Exp;  lines: +0 -0
Initial import of all files into CVS.
-----

So I think I still have the same question - Import from where?  (I think 
I'm looking for the exact point which it was forked from sourceforge g95 
repo)

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Toon Moene]

On 06/18/2011 01:02 PM, "C. Bergström" wrote:

> On 06/18/11 05:16 PM, Toon Moene wrote:

>> On 06/18/2011 12:12 PM, Toon Moene wrote:

>>
>>> On 06/18/2011 05:05 AM, Christopher Bergström wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi
>>>>
>>>> We're in the process of considering contributing to gfortran for a
>>>> special project, but when we started to vet the codebase we hit a bump
>>>> in lack of commit history.
>>>
>>> Additional information is here:
>>>
>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcc-g95
>>>
>>> The above gives you the history after the split from the g95 project:
>>>
>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/g95
>>>
>>> in January 2003.
>>>
>> The original commit by Paul Brook of the gcc-g95 repository contents
>> to the GCC repository is here:
>>
>> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/2003-07/msg01087.html
>>
> Ok I pulled the gcc-g95 and g95 projects
>
> gcc-g95 starts with this..
>
> revision 1.1.1.1
> date: 2003/01/06 21:04:20; author: paul_brook; state: Exp; lines: +0 -0
> Initial import of all files into CVS.
> -----
>
> So I think I still have the same question - Import from where? (I think
> I'm looking for the exact point which it was forked from sourceforge g95
> repo)

Well, that question is very simple to answer - the point at which Andy 
Vaught turned the g95 repository in a read-only one for the other 
contributors.

That was the whole reason to create a new repository.

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.org/~toon/; weather: http://moene.org/~hirlam/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran#news

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Christopher Bergström]

2011/6/18 Toon Moene <toon@moene.org>:
> On 06/18/2011 01:02 PM, "C. Bergström" wrote:
>
>> On 06/18/11 05:16 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
>
>>> On 06/18/2011 12:12 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
>
>>>
>>>> On 06/18/2011 05:05 AM, Christopher Bergström wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi
>>>>>
>>>>> We're in the process of considering contributing to gfortran for a
>>>>> special project, but when we started to vet the codebase we hit a bump
>>>>> in lack of commit history.
>>>>
>>>> Additional information is here:
>>>>
>>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcc-g95
>>>>
>>>> The above gives you the history after the split from the g95 project:
>>>>
>>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/g95
>>>>
>>>> in January 2003.
>>>>
>>> The original commit by Paul Brook of the gcc-g95 repository contents
>>> to the GCC repository is here:
>>>
>>> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/2003-07/msg01087.html
>>>
>> Ok I pulled the gcc-g95 and g95 projects
>>
>> gcc-g95 starts with this..
>>
>> revision 1.1.1.1
>> date: 2003/01/06 21:04:20; author: paul_brook; state: Exp; lines: +0 -0
>> Initial import of all files into CVS.
>> -----
>>
>> So I think I still have the same question - Import from where? (I think
>> I'm looking for the exact point which it was forked from sourceforge g95
>> repo)
>
> Well, that question is very simple to answer - the point at which Andy
> Vaught turned the g95 repository in a read-only one for the other
> contributors.
>
> That was the whole reason to create a new repository.

*cough*....

I feel the pain in that reply and it's not what I'm trying to stir up
here.  I'll see if we can directly match something against the 2
trees.

(Actually some of the point to all my questions are trying to make
amends to some of this past history)

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

["C. Bergström"]

  On 06/18/11 05:16 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
> On 06/18/2011 12:12 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
>
>> On 06/18/2011 05:05 AM, Christopher Bergström wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> We're in the process of considering contributing to gfortran for a
>>> special project, but when we started to vet the codebase we hit a bump
>>> in lack of commit history.
>>
>> Additional information is here:
>>
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcc-g95
>>
>> The above gives you the history after the split from the g95 project:
>>
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/g95
>>
>> in January 2003.
>>
> The original commit by Paul Brook of the gcc-g95 repository contents 
> to the GCC repository is here:
>
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/2003-07/msg01087.html
So I converted the cvs repo to git so I could actually dig and compare a 
little better..

Here's an example of what we're trying to understand

This file wasn't in g95, but then magically appears in Paul's initial 
commit.
gcc/f95/arith.h

# Unless I've messed up somewhere along my path..
# Was this file in gcc the whole time and just an external dep?

Here's the header at the time of commit
-------
/* Compiler arithmetic header.
    Copyright (C) 2000, 2001. 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
    Contributed by Steven Bosscher

This file is part of GNU G95.
--------
Seems like it's been around for a while, but certainly wasn't part of 
the sf.net g95 I cloned...

If anyone spots any errors in this conversion process # Yes I realize 
beyond the scope of this ML
git-cvsimport -v -a -i -k 
-d:pserver:anonymous@gcc-g95.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/gcc-g95 -C 
gcc-g95-cvs.git gcc-g95
git-cvsimport -v -a -i -k 
-d:pserver:anonymous@g95.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/g95 -C g95-cvs.git g95

I'll maybe have a more complete set of questions if everyone doesn't mind..

Thanks

./C

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Steve Kargl]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 06:22:21PM +0700, Christopher Bergstr?m wrote:
> 2011/6/18 Toon Moene <toon@moene.org>:
> > On 06/18/2011 01:02 PM, "C. Bergstr?m" wrote:
> >> On 06/18/11 05:16 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
> >>> On 06/18/2011 12:12 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
> >>>> On 06/18/2011 05:05 AM, Christopher Bergstr?m wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> We're in the process of considering contributing to gfortran for a
> >>>>> special project, but when we started to vet the codebase we hit a bump
> >>>>> in lack of commit history.
> >>>>
> >>>> Additional information is here:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcc-g95
> >>>>
> >>>> The above gives you the history after the split from the g95 project:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/g95
> >>>>
> >>>> in January 2003.
> >>>>
> >>> The original commit by Paul Brook of the gcc-g95 repository contents
> >>> to the GCC repository is here:
> >>>
> >>> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/2003-07/msg01087.html
> >>>
> >> Ok I pulled the gcc-g95 and g95 projects
> >>
> >> gcc-g95 starts with this..
> >>
> >> revision 1.1.1.1
> >> date: 2003/01/06 21:04:20; author: paul_brook; state: Exp; lines: +0 -0
> >> Initial import of all files into CVS.
> >> -----
> >>
> >> So I think I still have the same question - Import from where? (I think
> >> I'm looking for the exact point which it was forked from sourceforge g95
> >> repo)
> >
> > Well, that question is very simple to answer - the point at which Andy
> > Vaught turned the g95 repository in a read-only one for the other
> > contributors.
> >
> > That was the whole reason to create a new repository.
> 
> *cough*....
> 
> I feel the pain in that reply and it's not what I'm trying to stir up
> here.  I'll see if we can directly match something against the 2
> trees.

Good luck with that endeavor.  After the gfortran fork,
a certain individual would routinely obfusicate the code
in one of the repositories via gratuitious code motion,
varaible renaming, and whitespace munging.  This was an
attempt to neutered diff.  This same individual did not
include a ChangeLog along with the code, which again made
it difficult to understand what and why code was changed.
Finally, note I use the word repository here rather loosely
because one repository became hidden and only snapshot
tarballs were released.

-- 
steve

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

["C. Bergström"]

  On 06/18/11 11:41 PM, Steve Kargl wrote:
> Good luck with that endeavor.  After the gfortran fork,
> a certain individual would routinely obfusicate the code
> in one of the repositories via gratuitious code motion,
> varaible renaming, and whitespace munging.  This was an
> attempt to neutered diff.  This same individual did not
> include a ChangeLog along with the code, which again made
> it difficult to understand what and why code was changed.
> Finally, note I use the word repository here rather loosely
> because one repository became hidden and only snapshot
> tarballs were released.
Lets not beat up Andy on this at all, ok?  I want to put all this shit 
behind us and possibly work together.
-----
So what I'm looking at and comparing has nothing to with him at all in 
fact.  It's the last commit from Paul in the g95 tree to the 1st commit 
from Paul in the gcc-g95 tree.  Those should imho be equivalent, but 
they aren't.  If the additional files were from Paul it wouldn't be 
interesting at all, but they aren't and I want to know who/where/what on 
them.

"We" (PathScale) have to be *very* careful with the code we're working 
with.  If we can't trace the history back on a file it may mean we need 
to write it from scratch unfortunately.  (This is worst case of course)

I'm not trying to be a troll here for the record.  I'm honestly (against 
my will) trying to vet every line and where it came from.

After this I'd like to open a discussion about how to work together and 
see if we can build a really strong Fortran community.

(By working together I don't mean just PathScale, but a broader audience 
of possible contributors/testers/etc)

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Steve Kargl]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 12:13:25AM +0700, "C. Bergstr?m" wrote:
>  On 06/18/11 11:41 PM, Steve Kargl wrote:
> >Good luck with that endeavor.  After the gfortran fork,
> >a certain individual would routinely obfusicate the code
> >in one of the repositories via gratuitious code motion,
> >varaible renaming, and whitespace munging.  This was an
> >attempt to neutered diff.  This same individual did not
> >include a ChangeLog along with the code, which again made
> >it difficult to understand what and why code was changed.
> >Finally, note I use the word repository here rather loosely
> >because one repository became hidden and only snapshot
> >tarballs were released.
> Lets not beat up Andy on this at all, ok?  I want to put all this shit 
> behind us and possibly work together.

I'm not beating up on Andy.  I'm just reporting history and
why it is nearly impossible to compare g95 code to gfortran
code.  

> So what I'm looking at and comparing has nothing to with him at all in 
> fact.  It's the last commit from Paul in the g95 tree to the 1st commit 
> from Paul in the gcc-g95 tree.  Those should imho be equivalent, but 
> they aren't.  If the additional files were from Paul it wouldn't be 
> interesting at all, but they aren't and I want to know who/where/what on 
> them.

You'll probably need to talk with Paul Brook.  I suspect the timeline
goes something like

Andy closes g95 repository.

pbrook and stevenb fork g95 to gfortran, and asks the FSF/GCC
steering committee for permission to import code into GCC.

3 months later FSF/GCC steering committee gives the OK.

Meanwhile, pbrook and stevenb continued to work on code in their
private trees.

-- 
Steve

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Tobias Schlüter]

Hi Christopher,

On 2011-06-18 14:39, "C. Bergström" wrote:
> On 06/18/11 05:16 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
>> On 06/18/2011 12:12 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
>>
>>> On 06/18/2011 05:05 AM, Christopher Bergström wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi
>>>>
>>>> We're in the process of considering contributing to gfortran for a
>>>> special project, but when we started to vet the codebase we hit a bump
>>>> in lack of commit history.
>>>
>>> Additional information is here:
>>>
>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcc-g95
>>>
>>> The above gives you the history after the split from the g95 project:
>>>
>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/g95
>>>
>>> in January 2003.
>>>
>> The original commit by Paul Brook of the gcc-g95 repository contents
>> to the GCC repository is here:
>>
>> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/2003-07/msg01087.html
> So I converted the cvs repo to git so I could actually dig and compare a
> little better..
>
> Here's an example of what we're trying to understand
>
> This file wasn't in g95, but then magically appears in Paul's initial
> commit.
> gcc/f95/arith.h
>
> # Unless I've messed up somewhere along my path..
> # Was this file in gcc the whole time and just an external dep?

I think the history of this particular change went like this: Steven 
Bosscher was concerned about making g95 more modular.  Part of that 
process was splitting the big g95.h file into several parts -- that's 
where arith.h comes from.  Another part of that endeavour was moving the 
various tree dumpers into dump-parse-tree.c -- which IMO defeated the 
original purpose of having them in their corresponding source files 
(namely documentation), but on the other hand made that part more 
self-contained.

As for the history, there was another sourceforge project dedicated to 
g95 -> gcc integration bsides gcc-g95, its name escapes me right now. 
IIRC some of the I/O library was developed there.

Between the closing of g95's tree and gcc-g95's launch some development 
happened in private trees as pointed out before, but apart from that and 
Andy's very initial work which happened without CVS, you should find all 
the history in public record.

I'm sorry that I'm writing the following paragraph, but I think I 
should.  I heard rumors that Andy was hired by Pathscale, so I'm a bit 
worried about your intentions.  You're not trying to vet the code for 
the parts of the code which are available to relicensing to Pathscale 
for commerical exploitation, are you?  That's something that may under 
very specific circumstances be allowed by the usual copyright 
assignment?  You will probably understand that Andy's past behavior 
(including blatant disregard for free-software licenses, Steve already 
told the story) might make me question the behavior of people associated 
with him, even though I feel very rude doing so, and even though you 
alrady expressed good intentions.

Cheers,
- Tobi

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

["C. Bergström"]

  On 06/19/11 10:03 PM, Tobias Schlüter wrote:
>
> Hi Christopher,
>
> On 2011-06-18 14:39, "C. Bergström" wrote:
>> On 06/18/11 05:16 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
>>> On 06/18/2011 12:12 PM, Toon Moene wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 06/18/2011 05:05 AM, Christopher Bergström wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi
>>>>>
>>>>> We're in the process of considering contributing to gfortran for a
>>>>> special project, but when we started to vet the codebase we hit a 
>>>>> bump
>>>>> in lack of commit history.
>>>>
>>>> Additional information is here:
>>>>
>>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcc-g95
>>>>
>>>> The above gives you the history after the split from the g95 project:
>>>>
>>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/g95
>>>>
>>>> in January 2003.
>>>>
>>> The original commit by Paul Brook of the gcc-g95 repository contents
>>> to the GCC repository is here:
>>>
>>> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/2003-07/msg01087.html
>> So I converted the cvs repo to git so I could actually dig and compare a
>> little better..
>>
>> Here's an example of what we're trying to understand
>>
>> This file wasn't in g95, but then magically appears in Paul's initial
>> commit.
>> gcc/f95/arith.h
>>
>> # Unless I've messed up somewhere along my path..
>> # Was this file in gcc the whole time and just an external dep?
>
> I think the history of this particular change went like this: Steven 
> Bosscher was concerned about making g95 more modular.  Part of that 
> process was splitting the big g95.h file into several parts -- that's 
> where arith.h comes from.  Another part of that endeavour was moving 
> the various tree dumpers into dump-parse-tree.c -- which IMO defeated 
> the original purpose of having them in their corresponding source 
> files (namely documentation), but on the other hand made that part 
> more self-contained.
>
> As for the history, there was another sourceforge project dedicated to 
> g95 -> gcc integration bsides gcc-g95, its name escapes me right now. 
> IIRC some of the I/O library was developed there.
>
> Between the closing of g95's tree and gcc-g95's launch some 
> development happened in private trees as pointed out before, but apart 
> from that and Andy's very initial work which happened without CVS, you 
> should find all the history in public record.
>
Thanks for the information
> I'm sorry that I'm writing the following paragraph, but I think I 
> should.  I heard rumors that Andy was hired by Pathscale, so I'm a bit 
> worried about your intentions.
Why speculate or give credence to rumors - just ask if it's important to you
>   You're not trying to vet the code for the parts of the code which 
> are available to relicensing to Pathscale for commerical exploitation, 
> are you?  That's something that may under very specific circumstances 
> be allowed by the usual copyright assignment?  You will probably 
> understand that Andy's past behavior (including blatant disregard for 
> free-software licenses, Steve already told the story) might make me 
> question the behavior of people associated with him, even though I 
> feel very rude doing so, and even though you alrady expressed good 
> intentions.
I'd rather someone be rude and honest than quiet and polite.

<ignore>
I can't say I really care about Andy's alleged copyright infringement.  
(My general point on matters like this is litigate or shut up.  We're 
all here to get work done and licensing (licensing trolls and I don't 
mean you) is the single biggest detractor from open source progress I 
know of)

Andy started the project and at the time of the fork still was the 
majority contributor.  Cut the guy some slack for having a bit of ego 
and wanting to maintain control.  It's been how many years now and still 
too much hard feelings.  I'm biased but it's based on a positive working 
relationship.
</ignore>

<rant>
Please put in google open source ekopath or pathscale and see whose name 
and what news comes up.
(In the past 2 years I've directly been responsible for open sourcing 
more code than a lot of people and moved PathScale to an entirely open 
development model for x86.)

Now with that I'll play devil's advocate..

1) What's wrong with commercial software?
2) What's wrong if we strip out your contributions (20 patches if I'm 
not mistaken) from g95 and use it in a closed commercial product?  (See 
more comments below)
----
There's a couple views I can imagine people will have

1) GNU/GPL - Using licensing to try to ensure contributions go back 
upstream.  To me this works a majority of the time, but not always.  (I 
think it varies on the project and circumstances.  I have a personal 
laundry list of companies I'd like to force to give changes in public, 
but their products are so tightly controlled and I'm not a copyright 
holder so can't do a damn thing about it.  Then again even if the 
changes were public they aren't likely going to get merged anywhere or 
be useful.  So who has time to care at the end of the day.  Would you 
believe I wanted PathScale to be open source before I ever worked here 
and was blocked...)

2) BSD - No comment

3) Fortran HPC community as a whole - The majority of Fortran users I 
know work in or around HPC.  (I may be biased)  With that I can't say 
most of them care about open source at all.  (Some do)  They buy/use 
PathScale/PGI/Intel and for the larger labs I'm not sure if they use 
gfortran.  (They may, but I really don't have that data)  Most of them 
want their code to compile, get best performance and sometimes use 
F2K3.  You're not going to stop them from buying commercially supported 
compilers.

In this case I serve the end user/community and not directly open 
source.  Why?  Would it be good for Fortran if a F2K3 front-end was 
freely available under a commercially friendly license?  (This is a 
deeper question I'd love feedback on)
     a. I see people moving away from Fortran and more towards C++.  
(Sorry no empirical data to back this, but how do we stop this trend)
     b. People are trying to write books on F2K3, but what compiler can 
they even base their book on?
     c. Would there be any positive impact if every major vendor had the 
same front-end as gfortran and implemented the latest standard? (or even 
worse sent patches)
     d. Would there be any negative impact to gfortran if PGI/Intel took 
the front-end?  (Or even worse PathScale *gasp*)

Not all commercial companies are bad (Redhat, Canonical.. etc).  From my 
perspective it's commercial companies that generally pay people to work 
full time and get real engineering in open source done.

I could go on, but it's not productive..
</rant>

If you have concerns about PathScale email me privately.  My intention 
is to vet the codebase.  Vetting g95 is relatively easy, but there's a 
chasm between it and gfortran I'm trying to map.  If that's successful 
I'd like to figure out if/how PathScale can contribute.  if we continue 
to get much more negatively this early on (I don't care the reason).  
I'll just forget the whole thing.

./C

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Steve Kargl]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 11:04:09PM +0700, "C. Bergstr?m" wrote:
> 
> <ignore>
> I can't say I really care about Andy's alleged copyright infringement.  
> (My general point on matters like this is litigate or shut up.  We're 
> all here to get work done and licensing (licensing trolls and I don't 
> mean you) is the single biggest detractor from open source progress I 
> know of)

<adage>
"Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me"
</adage>

I think some of us are trying to avoid the latter half of the
adage.

> Andy started the project and at the time of the fork still was the 
> majority contributor.

Perhaps, you need to read the Copyright notices in the 
trans-*.[ch] files.  It was Paul Brook and Steven Bosscher
who initially wrote the majority of the code that hooked
Andy's parser up to the GCC middle and backend.  

cd gcc/fortran
head trans-*.[ch] | grep -A1 Contribu | grep -v "\-\-"
   Contributed by Paul Brook <paul@nowt.org>
   and Steven Bosscher <s.bosscher@student.tudelft.nl>
   Contributed by Paul Brook

   Contributed by Canqun Yang <canqun@nudt.edu.cn>

   Contributed by Paul Brook

   Contributed by Paul Brook

   Contributed by Paul Brook

   Contributed by Paul Brook <paul@nowt.org>
   and Steven Bosscher <s.bosscher@student.tudelft.nl>
   Contributed by Paul Brook <paul@nowt.org>
   and Steven Bosscher <s.bosscher@student.tudelft.nl>
   Contributed by Paul Brook

   Contributed by Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com>

   Contributed by Paul Brook <paul@nowt.org>
   and Steven Bosscher <s.bosscher@student.tudelft.nl>
   Contributed by Paul Brook

   Contributed by Paul Brook <paul@nowt.org>
   and Steven Bosscher <s.bosscher@student.tudelft.nl>
   Contributed by Paul Brook <paul@nowt.org>
   and Steven Bosscher <s.bosscher@student.tudelft.nl>

>  Cut the guy some slack for having a bit of ego 
> and wanting to maintain control.  It's been how many years now and still 
> too much hard feelings.  I'm biased but it's based on a positive working 
> relationship.
> </ignore>

(deleted rant)

> If you have concerns about PathScale email me privately.  My intention 
> is to vet the codebase.  Vetting g95 is relatively easy, but there's a 
> chasm between it and gfortran I'm trying to map.  If that's successful 
> I'd like to figure out if/how PathScale can contribute.  if we continue 
> to get much more negatively this early on (I don't care the reason).  
> I'll just forget the whole thing.

All of the code in gfortran is assigned to the FSF.  Have you
approached the FSF with a request to dual licenses the code?
There are on the order of 100 contributors listed in the 
gcc/fortran/ChangeLog* files.  Are you asking each individual to
re-license his/her contribution to gfortran?

-- 
Steve

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Janus Weil]

2011/6/19 "C. Bergström" <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
> In this case I serve the end user/community and not directly open source.
>  Why?  Would it be good for Fortran if a F2K3 front-end was freely available
> under a commercially friendly license?  (This is a deeper question I'd love
> feedback on)

From my point of view a freely available F2K compiler is the only hope
for something like a "Fortran community" to keep exisiting (or even
for the language itself to survive). Of course this does not mean at
all that there is no space for high-quality commercial compilers. I
even think that the commercial compiler vendors might profit from the
existence of a freely available compiler.

Note that right now we have barely *any* compiler which can claim to
have a complete F2K implementation (though a few are quite close).
Among the freely available ones, gfortran is surely the one which is
closest.


>    a. I see people moving away from Fortran and more towards C++.  (Sorry no
> empirical data to back this, but how do we stop this trend)

This is surely true. The only way to stop it is to provide a Fortran
implementation of those features that make C++ so attractive (e.g.
object orientation, etc). Such an implementation must be freely
available and on the same quality level as, say, g++.


>    d. Would there be any negative impact to gfortran if PGI/Intel took the
> front-end?  (Or even worse PathScale *gasp*)

What exactly do you mean by "taking" the front-end?


> Not all commercial companies are bad (Redhat, Canonical.. etc).  From my
> perspective it's commercial companies that generally pay people to work full
> time and get real engineering in open source done.

Agreed. Another example being Google, which helped me a lot to
contribute to gfortran (via several Summer of Code stipends).


> If you have concerns about PathScale email me privately.  My intention is to
> vet the codebase.  Vetting g95 is relatively easy, but there's a chasm
> between it and gfortran I'm trying to map.  If that's successful I'd like to
> figure out if/how PathScale can contribute.  if we continue to get much more
> negatively this early on (I don't care the reason).  I'll just forget the
> whole thing.

If you want this discussion to take a more positive direction, maybe
you should try to explain your intentions a bit more clearly instead
of making cloudy allusions. What exactly are you aiming for?

Cheers,
Janus

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Tobias Schlüter]

Hi all,

I'm sorry if I made this turn into a discussion of the benefits of Free 
Software, just two short points ...

On 2011-06-19 18:58, Steve Kargl wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 11:04:09PM +0700, "C. Bergstr?m" wrote:
>> Andy started the project and at the time of the fork still was the
>> majority contributor.
>
> Perhaps, you need to read the Copyright notices in the
> trans-*.[ch] files.  It was Paul Brook and Steven Bosscher
> who initially wrote the majority of the code that hooked
> Andy's parser up to the GCC middle and backend.

Let's not forget GCC itself, which really is the biggest part of g95 (of 
course, there would probably have been a g95 without gcc, as there would 
have been another compiler backend, but there wouldn't have been a g95 
without Andy).

>> If you have concerns about PathScale email me privately.  My intention
>> is to vet the codebase.  Vetting g95 is relatively easy, but there's a
>> chasm between it and gfortran I'm trying to map.  If that's successful
>> I'd like to figure out if/how PathScale can contribute.  if we continue
>> to get much more negatively this early on (I don't care the reason).
>> I'll just forget the whole thing.
>
> All of the code in gfortran is assigned to the FSF.  Have you
> approached the FSF with a request to dual licenses the code?
> There are on the order of 100 contributors listed in the
> gcc/fortran/ChangeLog* files.  Are you asking each individual to
> re-license his/her contribution to gfortran?

Given Christopher's answer to my question, I think he wants to make sure 
that the code is REALLY assigned to the FSF so that his company doesn't 
run into troubles down the road.

Cheers,
- Tobi

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Christopher Bergström]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Janus Weil <janus@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> 2011/6/19 "C. Bergström" <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
>> In this case I serve the end user/community and not directly open source.
>>  Why?  Would it be good for Fortran if a F2K3 front-end was freely available
>> under a commercially friendly license?  (This is a deeper question I'd love
>> feedback on)
>
> From my point of view a freely available F2K compiler is the only hope
> for something like a "Fortran community" to keep exisiting (or even
> for the language itself to survive). Of course this does not mean at
> all that there is no space for high-quality commercial compilers. I
> even think that the commercial compiler vendors might profit from the
> existence of a freely available compiler.
>
> Note that right now we have barely *any* compiler which can claim to
> have a complete F2K implementation (though a few are quite close).
> Among the freely available ones, gfortran is surely the one which is
> closest.
>
>
>>    a. I see people moving away from Fortran and more towards C++.  (Sorry no
>> empirical data to back this, but how do we stop this trend)
>
> This is surely true. The only way to stop it is to provide a Fortran
> implementation of those features that make C++ so attractive (e.g.
> object orientation, etc). Such an implementation must be freely
> available and on the same quality level as, say, g++.
>
>
>>    d. Would there be any negative impact to gfortran if PGI/Intel took the
>> front-end?  (Or even worse PathScale *gasp*)
>
> What exactly do you mean by "taking" the front-end?

Above I was referring to a fortran front-end (like gfortran) being
available under a more permissive license (BSD/MIT. etc)  If that was
true then it would be possible for a commercial compiler (PGI/Intel)
to take the front-end and then just make it emit the IR needed.

>
>
>> Not all commercial companies are bad (Redhat, Canonical.. etc).  From my
>> perspective it's commercial companies that generally pay people to work full
>> time and get real engineering in open source done.
>
> Agreed. Another example being Google, which helped me a lot to
> contribute to gfortran (via several Summer of Code stipends).

Certainly not an exhaustive list :)

>
>
>> If you have concerns about PathScale email me privately.  My intention is to
>> vet the codebase.  Vetting g95 is relatively easy, but there's a chasm
>> between it and gfortran I'm trying to map.  If that's successful I'd like to
>> figure out if/how PathScale can contribute.  if we continue to get much more
>> negatively this early on (I don't care the reason).  I'll just forget the
>> whole thing.
>
> If you want this discussion to take a more positive direction, maybe
> you should try to explain your intentions a bit more clearly instead
> of making cloudy allusions. What exactly are you aiming for?

Nothing cloudy

1) Vet the codebase (stated this clearly)
2) Listen to what people say - (What needs to be worked on, are people
open to things like dual licensing, what's the future of Fortran,
etc..)

For whatever reason someone at Apple has decided to work on "flang".
I'm not sure if the code is public or even a serious effort at all.
Apple certainly has the resources to toss at it, but outside of
someone's personal hobby project I can only think of one reason to
spend time on it.

1) Our goal (PathScale) is to implement F2K3/8
2) My personal goal is to advocate and push open source

# Possibly more important than either of the two points above
3) I'd like to see a larger Fortran community grow out of gfortran.
(This of course largely depends on if the contributors are more
interested in keeping it locked up to gcc or increasing Fortran
adoption.)

btw - I appreciate the feedback and information from everyone so far..

Thanks

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Mikael Morin]

On Sunday 19 June 2011 20:30:17 Christopher Bergström wrote:
> Nothing cloudy
> 
> 1) Vet the codebase (stated this clearly)
> 2) Listen to what people say - (What needs to be worked on, are people
> open to things like dual licensing, what's the future of Fortran,
> etc..)
> 
> For whatever reason someone at Apple has decided to work on "flang".
> I'm not sure if the code is public or even a serious effort at all.
> Apple certainly has the resources to toss at it, but outside of
> someone's personal hobby project I can only think of one reason to
> spend time on it.
> 
> 1) Our goal (PathScale) is to implement F2K3/8
Why not extend the existing frontend?
Is it in such a bad shape that rewriting a new IR generator is preferable?

Is it g95 only that you plan to import or some of gfortran as well?

I personally see no problem gfortran being reused in pathscale's compiler as 
long as pathscale's contribution is libre (free). It can even improve code 
quality to make gfortran backend independant (probably not much as the IR 
generation is quite separated already, but who knows?), and that would give us 
an open64 (this one is a "really free" compiler I think) backend at the same 
time. Not bad.

Mikael

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Ian Lance Taylor]

"C. Bergström" <cbergstrom@pathscale.com> writes:

> 1) What's wrong with commercial software?

I don't want to get into licensing fight, and I don't know anything
about the history of the Fortran frontend, but I do want to suggest a
correction to your wording.  I'm not aware of any GCC contributor who
thinks there is anything wrong with commercial software.  You even
mention commercial companies like Red Hat in your e-mail; Red Hat is a
significant contributor to GCC, along with several other commercial
companies.

What many GCC contributors are concerned about is proprietary software,
a completely different matter.  Code released under the GPL may not be
distributed in a proprietary manner.


> 2) What's wrong if we strip out your contributions (20 patches if I'm
> not mistaken) from g95 and use it in a closed commercial product?
> (See more comments below)

Nothing, if the g95 license permits it.  The only g95 frontend I am
aware of (g95.cvs.sourceforge.net) is distributed under the GPL and is
copyright FSF, and as such would only permit this if you were able to
identify each original author and get their agreement to distribute the
code under another license.


> There's a couple views I can imagine people will have

I can imagine several more, but it's kind of irrelevant with respect to
the g95 frontend in particular.  That code is under whatever license it
is under.


> If you have concerns about PathScale email me privately.  My intention
> is to vet the codebase.  Vetting g95 is relatively easy, but there's a
> chasm between it and gfortran I'm trying to map.  If that's successful
> I'd like to figure out if/how PathScale can contribute.  if we
> continue to get much more negatively this early on (I don't care the
> reason).  I'll just forget the whole thing.

You asked specifically about arith.h.  arith.h is not present in the g95
sourceforge repository.  It is present in the gcc-g95 repository.  The
gcc-g95 repository was created January 6, 2003.  Looking at the revision
of g95.h in the g95 repository immediately prior to that date, revision
1.212 commited January 3, 2003, it is evident that arith.h in the
gcc-g95 repository was created by simply moving some lines from g95.h to
arith.h.  That explains why the copyright date of arith.h is what it is:
it reflects the copyright date of g95.h.  Since this is a simple copy of
information from one file to another, there are no copyright issues
here.

It would have been cleaner if Paul had started with an exact extract of
the g95 repository when he created the g95-gcc repository, but evidently
he did not.  I skimmed the changes between the g95 repository dated
January 1, 2003 and the gcc-g95 repository revision 1.1.  There are many
whitespace and formatting changes, and a bit of code motion, all to
change the code to conform to the GNU coding standards.  I saw no
substantitive changes which would affect the copyright status; however,
I didn't examine the entire diff closely.  Perhaps if you identify other
specific concerns we can allay or corroborate them.

Ian

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Tobias Burnus]

On 06/19/2011 06:04 PM, "C. Bergström" wrote:
> 3) Fortran HPC community as a whole - The majority of Fortran users I 
> know work in or around HPC.  (I may be biased)  With that I can't say 
> most of them care about open source at all.  (Some do)  They buy/use 
> PathScale/PGI/Intel and for the larger labs I'm not sure if they use 
> gfortran.

I think you are biased that most Fortran users work around HPC. They 
mostly do work in natural science; thus, the kind of programs which run 
on HPC machines. But there are many users which have programs fast 
enough to run them on a laptop or work station in serial mode. However, 
a large minority of those programs also runs in parallel and thus on 
multi-cores, small clusters up to the HPC machines. While for HPC sites 
and larger institutions the compiler costs are negligible, for a smaller 
university group or for the laptop/computer at home, it matters - and 
gfortran fills the gap. That's also what I hear from vendors: The 
availability of gfortran - other free Fortran compilers do not seem to 
play a role (any more) - improves their sales.

For HPC sites themselves: All sites I know run Linux have have besides 
one - or several - vendor compilers also GCC/gfortran installed - and 
support it. Also some HPC vendors give support to their customers for 
GCC/gfortran. The reason for having a backup compiler is on one hand 
that code might not work with the vendor compiler (esp. in case of 
C/C++) but also if the vendor compiler has a bug. (Someone told me that 
gfortran saved a PhD thesis by being a replacement for a vendor compiler 
- with being only minutely slower. The vendor compiler was fixed 
eventually, but it took several months.)

My impression from both HPC sites, from users and other vendors is: All 
HPC sites have GCC/gfortran installed and use it as additional compiler 
besides the vendor/commercial compiler(s). Additionally, it is very 
common to have a commercial compiler at work - and use gfortran at 
home/on the laptop. Thus, many institutions require that their code also 
runs with gfortran - even though their main work horse is a commercial 
compiler. [Personal observation: On x86-64, gfortran is everywhere 
installed, the Intel compiler is very often, on two systems I also saw 
PGI - but I have never seen PathScale.]

I also do not agree about the statement that they do not care about Open 
Source. I know several places (large institutions like weather services 
or small projects) where the availability of a free (mostly: Open 
Source) compiler is a requirement and features not supported by gfortran 
my not be included. Thus, gfortran seems to be rather known among users 
and in the lower management. I heard also of some aviation company which 
considered to use gfortran because it was the only compiler supporting 
all their platforms. On the other hand, there are places where only some 
commercial compiler will do because the management does not trust 
free/OpenSource software. (They still often have GCC installed 
additionally.)

> Most of them want their code to compile, get best performance and 
> sometimes use F2K3.  You're not going to stop them from buying 
> commercially supported compilers.

First, one can also buy support for GCC and thus gfortran: Either 
directly via support contracts or indirectly via buying an enterprise 
Linux distribution. But having a commercial compiler does not rule out 
having an Open Source compiler; similarly, producing a commercial 
compiler does not stop companies of also supporting GCC - be it by bug 
reports, support to customers or directly contribution to the 
development of GCC. I also use all kinds of compiler: Having multiple 
compilers helps to find bugs in the code; independent of performance, it 
is convenient to use the default compiler on a given system - which 
might be gfortran at home and some commercial compiler at work/HPC centers.

However, I do not buy the F2003 and performance argument. gfortran is 
not really lagging behind Fortran 2003/2008. The number of compilers 
which are further is quite low and they are also not years ahead. 
(Though, having a more complete implementation is wished by everyone: 
Users, compiler developers and also other vendors [at least if they 
support that feature already].)

And with regards to performance, I think GCC is seriously underrated. 
One reason might be that the default settings are rather on the safe 
than on the performance side. If I look at benchmarks - such as at the 
one at Polyhedron (http://www.polyhedron.com/compare0html) I do not see 
a drastic difference (~25% slower than the fastest compiler for the 
geometric means) - and the site compares an old version of gfortran 
against the latest commercial compilers.

In my test, GCC 4.7 -Ofast -march=native -funroll-loops 
-finline-limit=600 is on average 3 to 16% *faster* than the other 
known-to-be-fast compilers I tested. [1] The variance is large and can 
easily reach a factor 2 for single benchmarks. Experience shows that it 
also can strongly depend on the math library. For instance, FSF GLIBC 
seems to be slow on x86-64 for many single-precision math operations 
(double precision is fine). Using a different math library, I can gain 
another 5% performance (8 to 21% faster than the other compilers). Note: 
Also my numbers are not completely fair as I have not tested the newest 
version of other compilers and possibly some settings could be improved 
(both for GCC and for the other compilers). However, those numbers do 
not seem to indicate that other compilers are - on average - 
significantly faster. Having a, e.g., 6% faster run time usually does 
not really matter. 
(https://users.physik.fu-berlin.de/~tburnus/gcc-trunk/benchmark/iff/#rt)

I think there are many reasons to buy a commercial compiler; better 
diagnostic, better performance, or just different diagnostics and 
different bugs are good reasons. But expecting a significant performance 
gain by blindly buying a commercial compiler is doomed to fail. Either 
one should not expect a big gain - or one should run performance tests 
with the actual program.

> In this case I serve the end user/community and not directly open 
> source.  Why?  Would it be good for Fortran if a F2K3 front-end was 
> freely available under a commercially friendly license?  (This is a 
> deeper question I'd love feedback on)
>
>     a. I see people moving away from Fortran and more towards C++.  
> (Sorry no empirical data to back this, but how do we stop this trend)

Me too, though I think the main reason is that they simply do not know 
any Fortran after FORTRAN 77 (written in a Fortran 66 style and without 
indention). Hence, they think that Fortran is obsolete. That seems to be 
in particular a problem for people who studied computer science. The 
other reason is that the appearance of Fortran 90 compilers (commercial 
but in particular free/opensource) was slow and F2003 implementation 
takes also long (no difference between commercial and open source).

Admittedly, I do not see a difference between the status quo and your 
proposal (F2003 front end under a commercially friendly license): 
gfortran and also Intel's compiler are widely used from laptops and 
desktops under Linux/Windows/MacOS to HPC systems. Those and the 
HPC-specific IBM xlf and Cray ftn compilers support a large chunk of 
Fortran 2003. I do not see either of these vendors changing their front 
end. Also NAG (known for the diagnostic) and PGI have a substantial part 
of Fortran 2003 implemented. While I would like to see a more complete 
implementation of Fortran 2003 and 2008 in all listed compilers and also 
a catching up of other compilers, I do not think that having a new 
commercially licence-friendly front end will make much of a difference 
in practice. Though I might be proven wrong.

>     b. People are trying to write books on F2K3, but what compiler can 
> they even base their book on?

None. At least until recently, I have not seen any full, sufficiently 
bug-free Fortran 2003 compiler. Nowadays, the number of supported 
features is quite large and usable, but not yet complete. On the other 
hand, when book authors start writing about a new standard immediately 
after it has been released, it is not surprising that not all features 
work. I think that also not really a problem.

Additionally, it is also not restricted to Fortran. C99 has/had also the 
problem of getting implemented and C++0x (or should it be now C++1x?) 
will also only show a slow adoption and implementation.

>     c. Would there be any positive impact if every major vendor had 
> the same front-end as gfortran and implemented the latest standard? 
> (or even worse sent patches)

First part: Maybe. Having the same front-end is a double-edged sword: If 
one compiler has a bug, the other compilers have the same bug - unless, 
the vendors do not contribute back, which makes the advantage of having 
initially the same front end mute. However, I find it unlikely that many 
vendors would switch the front end. Either the lag behind so much that 
they are essentially out of business - also swapping a front end costs 
many months of integration work, or they have a nicely working front end 
such that changing it wouldn't gain anything but introducing new bugs 
(even if it fixes old bugs). Thus, I would assume the number of vendors 
switching will be rather low.

Submitting (integrable) patches is of course positive. Also testing 
gfortran or sharing bug  reports is useful (the two latter also works 
when using a different front end).

>     d. Would there be any negative impact to gfortran if PGI/Intel 
> took the front-end?  (Or even worse PathScale *gasp*)

I think by itself not. As written, I doubt that PGI or Intel would do 
this - contrary to PathScale. There is of course the issue of the 
licence (for instance staying with the FSF licence or relicensing 
contributions *also* under a more "commercially friendly" licence). I 
have difficulties to assess the effect - especially in the mid and long 
term. How will it effect the contribution to GCC - will it increase or 
decrease in the long run?


Thus, any contribution to the FSF GCC is highly welcome, commercial 
products in general but also commercial products based on GCC are 
perfectly acceptable (even more so if the users/companies contributed 
back). While with regards to licence issues, the effect is nontrivial to 
assess. Having a better support for Fortran 2008 in any 
commercial/noncommercial compiler definitely helps the language and also 
every user (by giving them more choices between compilers and language 
[features]).

Tobias

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Anton Shterenlikht]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 11:04:09PM +0700, "C. Bergstr?m" wrote:
> 3) Fortran HPC community as a whole - The majority of Fortran users I 
> know work in or around HPC.  (I may be biased)  With that I can't say 
> most of them care about open source at all.  (Some do)  They buy/use 
> PathScale/PGI/Intel and for the larger labs I'm not sure if they use 
> gfortran.  (They may, but I really don't have that data)  Most of them 
> want their code to compile, get best performance and sometimes use 
> F2K3.  You're not going to stop them from buying commercially supported 
> compilers.

I think biggest fortran users are organisations
which are very conservative by design - power
generation (particularly nuclear) and defence. 
For example, I've head from a colleague
in Geography, who handled Met Office's (UK
national weather predition service) fortran
code that some routines in their production
code are still in Fortran IV.

These organisations are probably better
characterised as mission critical, than HPC.
All your VMS, NonStop, etc.
I'd say F2K3 is pretty low on the agenda for them.

I think it's those businesses that make the
most of fortran user community, even though
they are very quiet. Given their
conservatism, they are not going to switch
to anything else any time soon. That is
not to say that they don't use other languages,
just that they are not dropping fortran as their
main production language. They
might just be curious about an open source
compiler, but probably never as a first choice.

-- 
Anton Shterenlikht
Room 2.6, Queen's Building
Mech Eng Dept
Bristol University
University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 331 5944
Fax: +44 (0)117 929 4423

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Anton Shterenlikht]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 12:44:06PM +0200, Tobias Burnus wrote:
> 
> compiler. [Personal observation: On x86-64, gfortran is everywhere 
> installed, the Intel compiler is very often, on two systems I also saw 
> PGI - but I have never seen PathScale.]

we use it:

https://www.acrc.bris.ac.uk/acrc/phase1_software.htm

-- 
Anton Shterenlikht
Room 2.6, Queen's Building
Mech Eng Dept
Bristol University
University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 331 5944
Fax: +44 (0)117 929 4423

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Toon Moene]

On 06/20/2011 03:22 PM, Anton Shterenlikht wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 12:44:06PM +0200, Tobias Burnus wrote:
>>
>> compiler. [Personal observation: On x86-64, gfortran is everywhere
>> installed, the Intel compiler is very often, on two systems I also saw
>> PGI - but I have never seen PathScale.]
>
> we use it:
>
> https://www.acrc.bris.ac.uk/acrc/phase1_software.htm

According to this information (after clicking through a couple of times) 
you use gcc/g77 3.4.6 (which is understandable if you have code that 
uses extensions only g77 supports) and gcc/gfortran 4.1.0.

4.1.0 is *quite* old - I suggest upgrading to at least 4.4 or possibly 4.5.

Kind regards,

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.org/~toon/; weather: http://moene.org/~hirlam/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran#news

Re: Original commit history for gfortran

[Steven Bosscher]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2011 21:32:25 +0200, "Mikael Morin" wrote:
> I personally see no problem gfortran being reused in pathscale's compiler as
> long as pathscale's contribution is libre (free). It can even improve code
> quality to make gfortran backend independant (probably not much as the IR
> generation is quite separated already, but who knows?), and that would give us
> an open64 (this one is a "really free" compiler I think) backend at the same
> time. Not bad.

Be careful, open64 is not completely "libre". The license is GPLv2 with
a funny special remark about intellectual property licenses:

"Further, this software is distributed without any warranty that it is
  free of the rightful claim of any third person regarding infringement
  or the like.  Any license provided herein, whether implied or
  otherwise, applies only to this software file.  Patent licenses, if
  any, provided herein do not apply to combinations of this program with
  other software, or any other product whatsoever."

Whether this extra clause is a valid addition, I don't know. Not a lawyer,
etc.  But I'd bet a box of wine of a good vintage that this is incompatible
with GPLv3 that is the current license for gfortran. If so, you can't glue
a recent gfortran on top of the open64/pathscale/Rice/... back end.

Back porting gfortran code into an older, GPLv2 licensed g95 is also not
possible without permission from the FSF.

On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 01:30:17 +0700, Christopher Bergström wrote:
> # Possibly more important than either of the two points above
> 3) I'd like to see a larger Fortran community grow out of gfortran.
> (This of course largely depends on if the contributors are more
> interested in keeping it locked up to gcc or increasing Fortran
> adoption.)

It is not a question of personal interests and "keeping it locked up".

You make it sound as if gfortran contributors are blocking your Bigger Plan
for the Fortran community. Reality is that gfortran has helped ensure that
this community still exists at all. Gfortran is largely the result of quite
altruistic behavior of engineers and scientists with little or no background
in computer science to work around "you guys" commercial compiler vendors.
So please don't come here insinuating that gfortran contributors put their
own interests before that of the Fortran community. Had you put the Cray
front end out on a BSD license or donated it to the FSF, instead of locking
it up behind a shady modified GPLv2, then there wouldn't even have been a need
for a completely new GNU Fortran front end.

Contributors to gfortran agree to assign copyright for their contributions
to the FSF in exchange for a perpetual license to do as they see fit with
their own contributions (including re-licensing to 3rd a party). What you
seem to be asking for, is that all gfortran contributors are tracked and
that they all agree to re-license their contributions under a license that
suits your needs. For what it's worth, I have absolutely no intention to
do so. I find the whole idea offensive, especially given the history of
Pathscale and of g95.

Ciao!
Steven