------- Comment #9 from ian at airs dot com 2006-07-29 05:21 ------- It is safest to avoid posting the patch to a gcc mailing list before the copyright assignment is signed. It protects us in the (hopefully unlikely) case that the copyright assignment never does get signed. Otherwise we have a posted patch but no right to use it. If that happens, then when we eventually implement the same functionality in a different way, we are open to accusations that we have stolen the patch. Naturally the current SGI, which I presume is the legal owner of the code, would not do that. But I'm afraid we have to consider that there is likely to be a new legal owner of this code in the relatively near future, and we can not predict what they will do. This is all pretty small potatoes, of course, but there is no reason to add an unnecessary legal risk to the gcc project.
None of this says that Greg could not sent out the patch to individuals, though, so if you are interested in seeing it, drop him a note and see what he thinks. Hope this helps. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=28441