Re: Copyright forms (was: Automated testing framework)

[Richard Stallman <rms at gnu dot org>]

    It is 46.

    These are volunteers who maintain front-ends, ports, i18n, documentation,
    web pages... who may install changes of their own and approve changes of
    others in those areas they maintain.

46 is a lot of people to advise contributors on signing papers.  And it
sounds like most of them will do this only very rarely--maybe
a handful of times a year.

Perhaps it is best for most of them simply to ask someone else what to
do on such occasions.  I would suggest choosing approximately 8 people
who do this often as the ones who will do all of this work, and
inviting the others who rarely have occasion to forward it to those 8.
Of course, 8 is just a suggestion--a smaller number would be ok if
that's what the maintainers prefer, and a somewhat larger number would
be ok too.

    Ouch. Does that mean that before the next edition of the book someone
    will have to contact all who have contributed to the manual?

It would be a good idea to do this, yes.  Isn't it safe to assume,
though, that only contributors to GCC's code have contributed to the
manual?  That would make a finite set of people to ask, and they could
be asked easily enough by sending the same message text to each of
them.

    Have you considered the possibility to provide a "unified"  copyright
    assignment that applies to both GCC and the book that we could use in
    the future?

That is a good idea; I will get something like that drawn up.