On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 02:41:18PM -0400, Kaveh R. GHAZI wrote: > My understanding is that *users* of GCC are not impacted by the license > change. When users compile their code, they only care about the runtime > licenses as written into the GPL+exception clauses. These pieces of text > are still GPLv2 anyway (even on mainline), so there is zero change for > users.
It has been my experience that the legal departments of a number of large companies have reacted very strongly and negatively against the GPL v3. I don't know why but I would guess it has to do with the patent clauses. This has resulted in some cases in the creation of site policies forbidding the use of GPL v3 software. We do what we can to educate legal staffs on these issues, and other distributors have been doing the same; but it's clear that the license change is not a no-op for our users - even if simply because they don't think that it is. In other words, users do care. So if the branch is relicensed, maintenance patches for the branch can no longer be merged into any distributor's (or user's) tree that cares about this issue. -- Daniel Jacobowitz CodeSourcery
