Why not contribute? (to GCC)

[Mark Mielke]

On 04/26/2010 03:23 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> Chris Lattner<clattner@apple.com>  writes
>> w.r.t. "hoarding", I'll point out that (in the context of GCC) being
>> able to enforce copyright is pretty useless IMO.  While you can
>> force someone to release their code, the GPL doesn't force them to
>> assign the copyright to the FSF.  In practice this means that you
>> can force someone to release their GCC changes, but you can't merge
>> them back to mainline GCC.  In a warped way you could argue that the
>> FSF using the GPL encourages their software to fork :-)
>>      
> Again, just for the record.  History shows that this is not entirely
> useless.  People at NeXT wrote the Objective C frontend to GCC.  They
> did not intend to release the source code.  The FSF objected.  In the
> end, NeXT wound up contributing the code, and that is why GCC has an
> Objective C frontend.  In other words, the whole process worked as the
> GPL intended.

This presumes that NeXT would not have discovered the value of free 
software and done the right thing eventually anyways. I think anybody 
who truly believes in free software should believe in it for practical 
reasons. It's not just a religion - it's the right way to do business. 
Business can understand dollars, and free software can be demonstrated 
to provide value in terms of $$$.

I think anybody who truly believes in the *merit* of free software, 
should be approaching companies who do not understand the merit with a 
business plan, not a class action law suit.

Of course, if you don't believe in the *merit* of free software, and 
just think it's something cool to screw around with and force ideas down 
other people's throats -- Feel free to pursue the class action law suit 
approach, or consolidate ownership with the FSF and make it a straight 
forward law suit instead.

Cheers,
mark

P.S. Objective C in particular has a sour taste in my mouth, as it seems 
to be a key component to Apple's vendor lock in strategy. If you can't 
lock people in through closed source - just choose a barely used open 
source project extension to base the entire front end of your software 
on and cross your fingers the rest of the world won't bother to catch up 
any time soon because it is simply too much effort.