From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2014 21:17:56 +0100 Organization: Organization?!? Message-ID: <87k3cdy8p7.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <83bnxuzyl4.fsf@gnu.org> <871tyqes5q.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87a9ddg7o8.fsf@engster.org> <87d2i9ee8t.fsf@engster.org> <874n3ke1qn.fsf@engster.org> <87vbvzcjv9.fsf@engster.org> <87iorz18fy.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <83vbvyv08q.fsf@gnu.org> <87lhwuyycb.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87fvn2awbf.fsf@wanadoo.es> <83a9daug6e.fsf@gnu.org> <878usuard6.fsf@wanadoo.es> <838ustvlug.fsf@gnu.org> <874n3hbv1q.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87ob1pyb1f.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87zjl9aemy.fsf@wanadoo.es> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1393705096 16311 80.91.229.3 (1 Mar 2014 20:18:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2014 20:18:16 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Mar 01 21:18:24 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WJqMa-000198-7a for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 01 Mar 2014 21:18:24 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60760 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WJqMZ-0005Iq-Kh for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 01 Mar 2014 15:18:23 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:58115) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WJqMS-0005Ig-6e for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 01 Mar 2014 15:18:21 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WJqMM-0000OK-T0 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 01 Mar 2014 15:18:16 -0500 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:33785) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WJqMM-0000O6-MQ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 01 Mar 2014 15:18:10 -0500 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WJqMM-00012w-0t for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 01 Mar 2014 21:18:10 +0100 Original-Received: from x2f4fbe5.dyn.telefonica.de ([2.244.251.229]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sat, 01 Mar 2014 21:18:10 +0100 Original-Received: from dak by x2f4fbe5.dyn.telefonica.de with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sat, 01 Mar 2014 21:18:10 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 64 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: x2f4fbe5.dyn.telefonica.de X-Face: 2FEFf>]>q>2iw=B6, xrUubRI>pR&Ml9=ao@P@i)L:\urd*t9M~y1^:+Y]'C0~{mAl`oQuAl \!3KEIp?*w`|bL5qr,H)LFO6Q=qx~iH4DN; i"; /yuIsqbLLCh/!U#X[S~(5eZ41to5f%E@'ELIi$t^ Vc\LWP@J5p^rst0+('>Er0=^1{]M9!p?&:\z]|;&=NP3AhB!B_bi^]Pfkw User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Xs22lIRAPS3haCAzabeC0Hbj32I= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:170018 Archived-At: Óscar Fuentes writes: > David Kastrup writes: > >> Óscar Fuentes writes: >> >>> Just in passing I'll mention that that was one of the main motivations >>> for creating Clang. Some of today's Clang heavy contributors would >>> have preferred to do that modularization on GCC instead of starting >>> from scratch on a new project, but that was forbidden. Hence Clang is, >>> in great part, a consequence of the GNU policies intended to avoid GCC >>> usage by non-free software. Ironic, uh? >> >> Not particularly. The GPL has been crafted to use a subset of >> restrictions created by copyright law for ensuring a corpus of software >> that cannot be used to create software with other restrictions. > > IIUC what you say does not apply on this specific case, You don't understand correctly. > because those "heavy contributors" I'm talking about are, in essence, > Google employees who are interested on creating tools for > themselves. AFAIK the GPL is not an issue for them on this case and > they will be happy to contribute back those tools to GCC, as they do > for Clang. The Google employees are not the ones who have to figure out the technical consequences of letting the GPL keep serving its purpose with GCC. Apparently you believe that all one needs to do for copyleft to achieve its goals is to write the GPL and/or slap it on arbitrary software and then retire. Which would probably have made Richard quite more popular with a number of people, but that was never an objective. The basic "irony" requires more than just maintaining the GPL itself, it also means technical and strategical decisions that serve to make the GPL extend to derived applications in a useful and court-defensible manner. In this particular case, as I understand it basically from hearsay as I am not involved with GCC, there were several decisions made by Richard in the past stopping various attempts at modularizing GCC, like particular forms of plugins. The GPL can place demands on a derived work "as a whole" but does not extend its reach to separate programs that can, thanks to using well-defined interfaces, be considered as not being part of the same work. It does not really matter whether or not the Google engineers would have been willing to contribute under the GPL: their work would have become part of upstream GCC only when they were willing/able to assign copyright to GCC. But providing the interfaces where they would not have needed to work with the source code of GCC itself would have meant _exactly_ that they would not even have needed to release their part of the work under the GPL because it was _separable_. Whether or not they would have released under the GPL and/or reassigned copyright anyway, anybody else would have been able to release works depending on GCC with parts released under non-free licenses. That's the "ironic" line that Richard and the FSF are navigating. And if you are planning to sway his opinion, it would be smart to first understand what it is based on. -- David Kastrup