Re: Non-gcc releases

[Anthony Green <green at redhat dot com>]

Thanks for your email and proposal Etienne, and sorry for the delay in
responding.  Before I respond, I would just like to give some general
opinions first.

I have a _strong_ preference for libffi existing with a single copyright
ownership and a paper trail of copyright assignments.  I didn't feel so
strongly about this years ago when I created libffi, but times have
changed.  The FSF is the obvious choice for copyright ownership, for
many reasons.

I like the existing license, however, the GPL+Exception (libgcj/libgcc)
license is also OK with me.  This may be a requirement for FSF
stewardship of the project.

I agree that rolling independent releases of libffi would be useful to
many people.  This is what was happening for a while.  It just stopped
being a priority for me a few years ago.   To be honest, the configury
hacking required de-motivated me, but it seems that this has all been
fixed thanks to a couple of industrious hackers.

Several months ago I began a process of arranging for an assignment to
the FSF.  Unfortunately, I hit a bit of a stumbling block during this
process that hasn't magically resolved itself :-)   Helpful people are
volunteering to help push through this.  We'll see what happens...

On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 08:37, Etienne Gagnon wrote:
> So, my question for those whi know the answer, is:
> - Would it really make a difference if libffi's main code repository
> was separate from GCC? 

I don't think so.  If we revive the external libffi repository, then I
envision libffi being maintained much like config.sub, or perhaps
boehm-gc.

> PROPOSAL

This is a very generous proposal - so thank you.  However, I would like
to see a plan that actually addresses my primary concern - and that it
the copyright assignment issue.  I think the two issues (copright and
independent releases) are related, so I'd really like to tackle both at
once.

> I have thought longly about it, and I am really willing to provide
> the resources for hosting and maintaining libffi.  Given's libffi's
> very permissive license, I would provide repository write access to
> any contributor that agrees to the license, to maintain high standard
> code, and the ovious legalese: contributor should be real author of
> contribution, but *without* requiring any copyright assignment. 

What is your primary concern with copyright assignment?

Thanks again,

AG

-- 
Anthony Green <green@redhat.com>
Red Hat, Inc.