Re: [gccgo] Add notes about contributing patches

[Basile Starynkevitch <basile at starynkevitch dot net>]

On Fri, 03 Dec 2010 04:21:16 -0200
Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> wrote:

> Hi, Ian,
> 
> On Dec  2, 2010, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:
> 
> > +To contribute patches to the files in this directory, please see
> > +http://golang.org/doc/gccgo_contribute.html .
> > +
> > +Changes to these files require a copyright assignment to Google.  [...]
> 
> Hmm, I sense some disconnect in here. 
[...]
> 
> 
> Can you please clarify, and make sure that people who already have a
> copyright assignment with the FSF in place need not go through this
> process, that the documentation gives preference to that course over
> granting Google a non-copyleft, all-permissive license?


I also find all this strange & confusing.

If the social & legal rules for some subdirectories (eg gcc/go/ or
libgo/) of the GCC Trunk on svn are becoming different, I would think
it would be simpler (& less error prone) to put that subdirectory on
some other svn service, to ensure that a single svn commit to GCC trunk
(following the usual rules: contributor covered by legal document to
FSF, peer-reviewed patch) don't have several social & legal
requirements.

For me Basile, getting the legal papers was so painful that I will
never do that again. So if I need any bureaucratic work (i.e. to get
another legal signature from my employer) to be able to propose some
patch to gcc/go/ or libgo/ I prefer to avoid proposing such patches.

But I might be perhaps interested to contribute some tiny things to go.
Intellectually I could be interested by its garbage collector, or by
adding ability to dlopen some shared object producted by the GCC go
compiler into some go module (but of course I don't promise anything).

However, if sending a four line patch for gcc/go or libgo/ requires yet
another legal document, I won't even look inside these directories.

So definitely, a clarification is welcome. Can people (like me) already
covered by a copyright assignment to FSF send patches for gcc/go or
libgo/ or should they avoid that? 

Or is Google's goal to avoid any patch [to the gcc/go or libgo/ part of
FSF GCC trunk] which is not covered by an extra legal document with
Google?

I hope that legal rules to submit patches don't vary from one
subdirectory of the GCC trunk to another.

Cheers.

PS. Maybe my English understanding was bad, and I did not understood
all of Ian's message.

-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
8, rue de la Faiencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France
*** opinions {are only mine, sont seulement les miennes} ***