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Documentation legal issues (Was: Re: Poor internal documentation)
Quoting Manuel LÃpez-IbÃÃez <lopezibanez@gmail.com>:
On 23 April 2010 15:05, Philipp Thomas <pth@suse.de> wrote:
* Ian Lance Taylor (iant@google.com) [20100413 00:41]:
Details of GIMPLE IR: poor.
Details of tree IR: poor.
How to write a new optimization pass: poor.
How to write a new frontend: nonexistent.
General overview of compiler source: nonexistent.
Overview of internal compiler datastructures: nonexistent.
I'd say these these warrant an additional bullet "Documentation" under
"Improving GCC" on the GCC wiki that then lists (at least) these points.
It's not much, but it at least shows the GCC developers are aware and just
maybe it does attract the interest of someone.
Great! Go ahead, please. The wiki is easy to edit. Bonus points if you
collect there links to the existing documentation, so anyone wishing
to help has the many sources at hand.
However, is that not putting well-meaning contributers in peril of infringing
on the Copyright of the FSF in GCC by putting GPLed code into a GFDLed
document? Often, you want to use some snippets of code from the sources as
an example, or lift some explanation from a comment in order to write
documentation.
If the legal entity doing this is not the one who contributed the code in
the first place, the only right they have to the code is what is granted
under the GPL. Posting a patch with such code to the GCC mailing list
without a GFDL license grant would be Copyright infringement, unless
the poster could be construed to act on behalf of the FSF due to a
maintainership held, or the post is considered internal to the FSF -
I'm not sure if either of these would apply, but I don't think that
could possibly apply for a new contributer who has not at least
write-after-approval status.
Or will there be a license grant to cover such uses of GPLed code under
the GPL?
Is the steering committee empowered and willing to do that?