FSF Policy re. inclusion of source code from other projects in GCC

[Richard Guenther]

On 17 Mar 2006 23:27:35 +0100, Gabriel Dos Reis
<gdr@integrable-solutions.net> wrote:
> Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> writes:
>
> | Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> |
> | > I am confused.  My interest in libgcc-math is that it helps solve
> | > thorny issues with libstdc++-v3 and my expectation is that we can make
> | > modification to libgcc-math so that we can't advantage of it.  Now, I
> | > understand that we cannot make modification to libgcc-math without
> | > modifying GLIBC?  Is that correct.
> |
> | Yes, that is correct.  It would take additional special dispensation
> | from the FSF to modify the GLIBC code.  RMS wants such modifications to
> | be submitted upstream first, to avoid forks.  You could ask RMS for that
> | additional permission, if you want.
>
> Thanks for the clarification.
>
> | Please do not ask me to interpret or justify all of the rules; I don't
> | understand the issues sufficiently well.  I am just passing along the
> | results of a long discussion with RMS on the SC list.
>
> I understand :-)
>
> Did I know this implication, and given past difficulty to communicate
> with GLIBC people, I'm not sure I did the right thing (e.g. being
> enthousiastic about libgcc-math).

I'll try my best.  And I take it as granted that I can turn to RMS in the case
we only get the usual reactions like
http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2005-07/msg00008.html
(not that I didn't try to avoid creating libgcc-math in the first place...)

Richard.