Re: fsf copyright assignment help

["Carlos O'Donell" <carlos at systemhalted dot org>]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 5:56 PM, Josh Hunt <johunt@akamai.com> wrote:
> As per
> https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Contribution%20checklist#FSF_copyright_Assignment
> I am reaching out to libc-help for help in figuring out which FSF copyright
> assignment request form(s) I would need to fill out in order to be able to
> contribute to the glibc project
>
> I'm also interested in possibly contributing to libgcc as well. I'm not sure
> if that falls under the glibc project or not. Please let me know if it does
> not.

The gcc project contains libgcc.

The glibc and gcc project are tightly coupled. They form the basis for
the "implementation" and often collude to implement language-specific
constructs that require coordination between the compiler and runtime.

Therefore to contribute to glibc and libgcc you would need copyright
assignments for both glibc and gcc.

> I do not have any patches to submit yet, but am planning on working on a few
> things in the near future and thought it may be useful to get the copyright
> assignment process started now.
>
> Please let me know if you need any other information from me.

The easiest copyright assignment for the community is the "futures"
copyright assignment.

It means that the copyright of any code you submit now and any code
you submit in the future is assigned to the FSF and can be immediately
accepted by the community once it passes review.

If I were you and I was looking at contributing to the toolchain in
general I would do the following (which I did over a decade ago):

(a) File personal copyright assignment for the core toolchain projects
at the same time: gcc, binutils, glibc, and gdb. You invariably find
something that needs fixing across all four if you do something new.
Even if you don't you invariably find some docs improvement to submit
across all four as you start using them.

(b) If your employer makes a claim on your work, then I'd work with
your employer to have them cover the same 4 core toolchain projects.
This is the harder sell, but I'm happy to talk about the value this
brings to employers.

Does this answer your question?

Cheers,
Carlos.