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Re: GCC 4.4.0 Status Report (2009-03-13)
Daniel Berlin wrote:
>>> The matters to which we defer to the FSF are any matters that they *ask*
>>> us to! They own the code. If RMS, for some reason, decides that he doesn't
>>> like the phrasing of a comment somewhere, we have to either convince RMS
>>> he's wrong or change the comment.
>> Indeed.
> Err, sorry, but no.
This isn't a legal question.
This is the FSF's official GCC repository. In the FSF's repository, I
think we have to honor FSF instructions. In a separate repository --
or, I suppose, if we explicitly told the FSF not to consider this their
official GCC repository -- the GPL of course gives us the freedom to do
as we please with respect to technical decisions.
As an extreme example, in a separate GCC repository, I could certainly
check in a change that made GCC print out a message saying that
proprietary programs are virtuous. The GPL allows me to do that and to
distribute the resulting binaries and so forth. But, in the FSF's
official repository, that would clearly be a breach of faith.
--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713