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

[Toon Moene <toon at moene dot indiv dot nluug dot nl>]

Linus Torvalds wrote:

> In article <20000516031448.H13075@Jeffreys.suse.de> Phillip Thomas writes:

> >So the real question seems to be, who's going to convince SGI to do the
> >assignment, ain't it?

> 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.

Ho, ho - lets try to stick to the *question* we were trying to resolve,
namely whether it would be possible to use code from a GPL'd work that
was *not* assigned to the FSF in one that *is*.

The fact that we conclude that we cannot does not lay moral blame on SGI
- they are fully in their right to publish a GPL'd compiler, and if
people want to use it in preference to the one that comes installed with
their Linux/*BSD distribution, they are free to do so.

I do not see where we infringe on that freedom.

Note that Andy Vaught (original author of g95) has written some notes on
the issue of SGI's Fortran 90 compiler vs. GNU Fortran 95 on the g95
home page - http://g95.soureforge.net/.

-- 
Toon Moene - mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phoneto: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
GNU Fortran 77: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/g77_news.html
GNU Fortran 95: http://g95.sourceforge.net/ (under construction)