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Re: Documentation etc
On Apr 18, 2004, at 08:28, Etienne Gagnon wrote:
So, if I understand correctly, the main motivation for seeking
copyright assignment is so that the FSF can change the license
to a strictger one.
No, sorry but the assignment is so that it is easier to keep track
of "who" owns what code in the case where it is assigned over to
the FSF, you do not have to keep track at all. Your code is
protected by someone who knows about free software. I know that
when I start working on adding var arg support into libffi, I do not
want to protect my own code and figure out if someone copied it without
doing it properly.
I am totally opposed to any change to the license of libffi. And,
as I explained before, I will not be assigning my copyright to
anybody for any possible change I will make to libffi.
Why? There is no big difference in the way the current license can be
used
and GPL+exception. In that you can still use it in a closed source
software without any troubles (except you have to give out the source to
only libffi if asked from customers but that is all the difference).
This settles the question for me: I really think that libffi should
migrate off the GCC repository, to protect it, on the shorter and
longer term, against any license restrictions, and allow
for contributions without copyright assignment. Also, it will assess
libffi's independence of control from the GCC Steering Committee.
I think the idea of copyright assignments are to protect the code,
because if someone comes along and adds code to libffi but later
says they did not license it right, you have to remove the code
and sometimes even from CVS.
I think that GCC can continue hosting a copy of the new upstream tree,
if
it simplifies GCC's build process, and allows for more eyes to look at
the
code. Yet, I really think it will be healthier for the official
libffi to be
hosted off the GCC tree.
I think the point here is that libffi is getting bigger and bigger and
the most people who are contributing to libffi are mainly GCC
developers who
want to make sure that they sources are safe and not really have to
deal with
the copyright violations themselves which is the reason behind
assigning it
to someone else in the first place.
Just some thoughts,
Andrew Pinski
PS this is turning into a political discussion instead of a technical
one.