"Ed S. Peschko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > And in any case, why should it be off-topic? I would think that > the possibility of your project being divided in two would be of > great concern to you guys, and that you'd have every single motivation to > convey any sort of apprehension that you might have about such a split > to the group that could prevent it. After all - lots of you are putting > a great effort into GNU software basically gratis...
(I'll post on this once, even though it is off-topic. I apologize if this seems excessively inappropriate.) None of us think that our project is going to be divided in two. 1) The license of gcc does not carry over to the license of code compiled with gcc. gcc has been used for many years to compile proprietary code which runs on proprietary systems. It follows that there is absolutely nothing wrong with using a GPLv3 gcc to compile GPLv2 code on GPLv2 systems. 2) Every person who has contributed a patch of any significance at all to gcc has signed a paper granting the FSF the rights to the code, including the right to release the code under any free software license. It follows that people who are vitally concerned about the possibility of a license change to gcc within the bounds of free software are not, in general, contributors to gcc. I appreciate your need to raise the alarm about GPLv3. But I don't think that gcc is a useful area. gcc is and always been owned by the Free Software Foundation. That fact comes with certain implications, including the prospect of future changes to the GPL (gcc in fact already went through the GPLv1 to GPLv2 change, not that that was a big deal). Contributors to gcc already faced these issues long ago. Ian
