From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 305 invoked by alias); 14 Apr 2010 21:34:01 -0000 Received: (qmail 32762 invoked by uid 22791); 14 Apr 2010 21:34:01 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from smtp-103-wednesday.nerim.net (HELO kraid.nerim.net) (62.4.16.103) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:33:56 +0000 Received: from hector.lesours (ours.starynkevitch.net [213.41.244.95]) by kraid.nerim.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48310CF162; Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:33:53 +0200 (CEST) Received: from glinka.lesours ([192.168.0.1]) by hector.lesours with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1O2ADZ-00052h-Jn; Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:33:53 +0200 Message-ID: <4BC634F1.6030906@starynkevitch.net> Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:26:00 -0000 From: Basile Starynkevitch User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (X11/20100411) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ian Lance Taylor CC: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Notes from the GROW'10 workshop panel (GCC research opportunities workshop) References: <003b01cadbde$21913eb0$64b3bc10$@com> <20100414154431.GR540@codesourcery.com> <4BC609AA.7080503@moene.org> <4BC61C34.7070106@starynkevitch.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2010-04/txt/msg00356.txt.bz2 Ian Lance Taylor wrote: > Basile Starynkevitch writes: > >> My point is that academics can quite easily contribute to GPL >> software, but much harder obtain the necessary legal authorizations to >> transfer copyright to FSF. My intuition is that if (in a different >> past & a different world which did not happen) GCC was only GPLv2+ >> without the FSF copyright requirement -exactly as Linux kernel is, >> things would have been much different. > > That is likely true, but it's something that we really don't want to > change. The FSF could and should make the copyright disclaimer much > simpler--for example, you can do Google's copyright disclaimer on a > web page (http://code.google.com/legal/individual-cla-v1.0.html). But > avoiding the copyright disclaimer entirely is what permitted, e.g., > the SCO debacle to occur. From what I understood of the runtime exception of GCC, plugins should be GPLv3 licensed but are not requested to be FSF copyrighted. Of course such plugin code is not inside GCC FSF (I am expecting it would be hosted elsewhere, e.g. on some university site; of course FSF owned plugins -like MELT- are different). From the point of view of an academic, that makes a significant difference. And even if he/she want to push code inside GCC (and for that he still will need the transfer to FSF, unless GCC changes a lot), convincing his big boss to sign a paper is less terrible when you actually have some code (in a plugin form) that really has some outside interest. In that (optimistic) situation, the academic could spend some of his time to get the legal papers signed. Before the plugins, the academics could fork GCC (a huge non academic task) and work on his fork (practically unlikely) or should take the effort to get the legal papers signed before coding the first line of code (very hard, and very discouraging). A university (or research institute) boss in big suit [able to sign legal papers] is probably more keen to sign a legal paper with the FSF once some code -from his university- exist which attracts outside interest, and not before. And my personal preference on GCC licensing would be more a Linux-kernel like GPL with copyright belonging to authors employee (I don't feel a SCO like issue as a major threat today; it might have been ten years ago). That is much easier to get than a copyright transfer to FSF. And GCC is probably less threatened today by legal issues à la SCO than by obesity, obsolescence, outside competition -eg LLVM- and perhaps even less interest by industry for the low level languages (C, C++, Ada) GCC is processing. Even in industry, scripting languages (or languages like Java or C# which are not practically significant for GCC) have more market share than a dozen years ago. Cheers. -- Basile STARYNKEVITCH http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/ email: basilestarynkevitchnet mobile: +33 6 8501 2359 8, rue de la Faiencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France *** opinions {are only mines, sont seulement les miennes} ***