Re: Remove RMS from the GCC Steering Committee

[Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2021, Giacomo Tesio wrote:

> That being said (and for full disclosure), I also consider his return to
> the FSF fair, because the shitstorm that caused his resign two years
> ago was built on top of a severe misrepresentation of his words, as
> described here https://jorgemorais.gitlab.io/justice-for-rms/ and
> admitted also by the people arguing against his return (see the
> various edits at https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix ).

I explicitly stated in my comments that my agreement with Nathan's 
conclusion is *not* based on the views RMS has expressed, whether on that 
occasion or on any other.

> But I'd want Stallman in GCC's SC for a totally different reason:
> 
> On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 18:50:52 +0200 Martin Jambor wrote:
> 
> > Nobody suggested that GCC would be relicensed and certainly not to a
> > non-free license.  If you decide to contribute your port upstream, it
> > will be safe with us, regardless of who will or will not be on the
> > steering committee

The GCC SC doesn't have the power to relicense GCC; that lies with the 
FSF.  We can correct clear licensing mistakes where the underlying 
licensing policy is already established (e.g. if someone forgets to put 
the runtime exception in a file in a target library) and there are certain 
cases with delegated relicensing powers (e.g. copying documentation for 
target hooks between GFDL and GPL files).  But in general relicensing 
depends on the FSF and that doesn't depend on who is on the SC.

(The original owner of code who assigned it to the FSF can also license 
copies of the code they contributed (not anyone else's changes to that 
code) under different licenses if they so wish, in accordance with the 
terms of the standard assignment agreements.  The standard assignment 
agreements also prevent the FSF from distributing the code under 
proprietary terms.)

> On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 17:45:24 +0000 Joseph Myers wrote:
> > One of the key functions of the SC is actually saying no to RMS.
> 
> My bad experiences with Google and SFC makes me ask: "about what?"

Any time he comes up with an idea, technical or otherwise, that doesn't 
make sense (he's too far removed from actually following GCC development 
or use to be able to judge that effectively himself).  If an idea makes 
sense, of course we'll let him know that we'll consider patches.  (It's 
only likely to be in very routine cases that someone on the SC just makes 
the requested change themselves, e.g. if he points out somewhere in the 
GCC documentation saying "Linux" that should be "GNU/Linux" in accordance 
with GNU conventions.)

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com