Re: SGI releases IA64 C C++ and F90 compiler under GPL

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds at transmeta dot com>]

In article <20000516031448.H13075@Jeffreys.suse.de> you write:
>* Jeffrey A . Law (law@cygnus.com) [20000515 23:38]:
>
>> You'd have to discuss it with RMS, but I suspect the answer is no, we couldn't
>> do that with any significant amounts of code.
>
>So the real question seems to be, who's going to convince SGI to do the
>assignment, ain't it?

I think the real question is more along the lines of "Who's going to
convince the FSF and Cygnus to stop this stupid requirement of copyright
assignments?". 

The problem is not SGI.  The problem is the FSF's silly assignment
requirements. RMS is the problem, not SGI.

Assigning your copyright to somebody else is _bad_. It means that
somebody else can use your code without your permission. 

The GPL already allows mixing of different sources of code, no
assignment is necessary.  The assignment requirement is a political tool
to get control of the software, and nothing more. 

In short, the assignment itself is of quite questionable morality in the
first place, and then the FSF/Cygnus has the _gall_ to lay the blame for
the trouble their own inflexibility causes on somebody else. 

SGI seems to have done everything right.  Don't blame _them_ for other
peoples stupidity and moral dishonesty. They wrote the code, they should
hold the copyright. It's that simple. Why some people cannot see that is
beyond me.

		Linus