Re: ping: RFA: GPLv3: gcc/ada

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat dot com>]

On Aug 24, 2007, Arnaud Charlet <charlet@adacore.com> wrote:

>> That's the bit I don't quite understand.  How can it be that a patch
>> going into the FSF tree would make it harder for you to contribute
>> your changes?
>> 
>> I don't assume you keep your internal tree fully in sync with that of
>> gcc.gnu.org.

> That's where you assume wrongly. We get all changes done at the FSF
> integrated as soon as convenient in our tree.

Couldn't you deal with the changes in the Ada sub-directory in just
the same way you're dealing with the changes in the other directories
that have already upgraded to GPLv3?

Bear in mind that it's not the license notice at the top of each file
that determines the license under which new patches are offered.  The
FSF has already made the decision that new code ought to be GPLv3+
only, so installing the patch will just make this fact crystal
clearer.  You shouldn't integrate patches right now and assume they're
under GPLv2 just because the files say so because you've managed to
put off the installation of the patch.


If you need to keep a GPLv2 code base, you should have already stopped
merging from the FSF trunk into your internal code base.  You can
still save the upgrade-to-GPLv3 patch and any subsequence patches
posted to the trunk to reduce differences between your tree and the
FSF's, such that you can simplify your process of contributing or
verifying that patches have been contributed.  I.e., keep such patches
at hand and, when you're about to compare the two trees, either
install the patches in one of them or revert the patches from the
other, and then you get a clear picture of the differences you've
introduced that you might still want to contribute.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}