Re: FW: trademark filings for GCC?

[Richard Stallman <rms at gnu dot org>]

Since you related your offer to help us obtain GCC as a trademark to a
wish to help the "open source community", I had better say that while
we would appreciate your help, we don't consider GCC to be an "open
source" activity and we don't think of our community as the "open source"
community.

GCC is an activity of the free software movement.  I wrote GCC in the
80s as part of of developing a free operating system (GNU), the
purpose of which is so that computer users can have freedom to
cooperate and to control their own computing.  The open source
movement was founded much later (1998) specifically to reject these
idealistic goals.  Some people who contribute to GCC may hold
open-source views--we don't insist contributors must agree with the
GNU Project on these questions--but GCC overall is part of the free
software movement.

Open source advocates do contribute to our community, when they work
on free software packages, but our community is older than that
movement, and owes its existence to the idealism that movement
rejects.  It was built by the free software movement, so it is the
free software community.  If you help us, please keep in mind that
what you're helping is the free software movement.

Eben Moglen says having GCC as a trademark would be a good thing, so
please do that if you wish.  However, there are many other kinds of
legal help that we need more crucially.  Might you be amenable to
helping us in other ways?