source mgt. requirements solicitation

[Stan Shebs]

Linus Torvalds wrote:

>[...]
>
> If gcc had less of a restrictive model
>for accepting patches, you'd have a lot more random people who would do
>them, I bet.
>
I can assure you that there are lots of random GCC patches and forks
out there, some of them drastically divergent from the main version.
(I myself have been responsible for a few of them.)

Nobody is being stopped from forking GCC and promoting their own
versions.  A large number of GCC developers have chosen to cooperate
more closely on a single tree because we've empirically determined
that we get a better quality compiler that way.  Choice of source
management systems is a minor detail, not a make-or-break issue.

>But gcc development not only has the "CVS mentality", it has
>the "FSF disease" with the paperwork crap and copyright assignment crap.
>
If AT&T had come down on GNU in the 80s the way that they did on
BSD in the early 90s, you wouldn't have had any software to go
with your kernel.  RMS is much smarter than you seem to think.

Stan