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

[Matt Austern <austern at sgi dot com>]

Mike Stump writes:
 > > Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 03:14:48 +0200
 > > From: Philipp Thomas <pthomas@suse.de>
 > > To: Jeffrey A Law <law@cygnus.com>
 > 
 > > So the real question seems to be, who's going to convince SGI to do
 > > the assignment, ain't it?
 > 
 > I can try...  I need a very specific case, with very specific goals
 > with specific benefits.

Speaking just for myself (I'm an SGI employee and I work in the
compiler group, I don't make official SGI policy)...  I don't think
the issue is so much one of convincing SGI but of working out the
details.

We did discuss the possibility of assigning copyright to the FSF, and
I don't think anyone definitely rejected the idea.  It'll take some
time, partly because this kind of decision can only be made by high
level management and anything of that sort takes a lot of time, and
partly because there are some specific issues that we'll have to
discuss first with the FSF.  

One of those issues, for example, is that SGI's compiler does not
conform to the usual GNU coding standards; large parts of it are
written in C++.  I don't think we would want that to change.  Another
issue is that some files are shared between the open source Pro64
compiler and SGI's MIPS/IRIX compiler.  SGI has no plans to release
its MIPS/IRIX compiler under the GPL.  I've seen the discussion here
saying that assigning copyright to the FSF doesn't necessarily
preclude releasing the same source code under a different license, but
for something of this importance I'm certain that SGI would need legal
advice and would need specific written assurance from the FSF.

So what I'm saying is: this isn't out of the question, but you also
shouldn't expect it to happen next week.  The SGI compiler group
management knows about the discussion on this mailing list.

                        --Matt Austern