> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2021 at 10:22 AM
> From: "Mark Wielaard" <m...@klomp.org>
> To: "Jonathan Wakely" <jwakely....@gmail.com>
> Cc: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: GCC association with the FSF
>
> Hi,
>
> Lets change the subject now that this is about GCC and the FSF.
>
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 01:46:29PM +0100, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> > Probably unintentionally, but he has allowed the GNU Project to become
> > a nasty cult of personality. The FSF seems to be imploding (with mass
> > resignations in the past week). I don't think GCC benefits from being
> > associated with either of them.
>
> I admit it isn't looking very good and their last announcement is
> certainly odd: https://status.fsf.org/notice/3833062
>
> But apparently the board is still meeting this week to discuss and
> might provide a better statement about the way out of this. So lets
> give them a couple more days before writing them off completely.
>
> > Is there any incident where FSF being the copyright holder for GCC has
> > made a difference?
>
> Yes, at least in my experience it has been helpful that the FSF held
> copyright of code that had been assigned by various individuals and
> companies. It allowed the merger of GNU Classpath and libgcj for
> example. There have been various intances where it was helpful that
> the FSF could unilatrally adjust the license terms especially when the
> original contributor couldn't be found or didn't exist (as company)
> anymore.
>
> And it is really helpful that we don't have to ask permission of every
> individual contributor to be able to create the GCC manual (because
> the GPL code and GFDL text could otherwise not be combined) but that
> the FSF can grant an exception to one of the developers to create it.

I have been discussing with Richard Stallman how we could get compatibility
between the GFDL and the other licences.

> > Are there any GPL violations involving GCC code
> > that were resolved only because all copyright resides with a single
> > entity, that couldn't have been resolved on behalf of individual
> > copyright holders?
>
> I think it has been very helpful preventing those violations. If you
> only have individual copyright holders instead of an organisation with
> the means to actually resolve such violations people pay much more
> attention to play by the rules. See for example the linux kernel
> project. I believe there are so many GPL violations precisely because
> almost no individual has the means to take up a case.
>
> > Are we still worried about BigCorp trying to do a proprietary fork of
> > GCC? Because BigCorp, OtherCorp etc. have shown that they would prefer
> > to create a new toolchain from scratch rather than use GNU code. And
> > if EvilCorp want to make their own proprietary compiler with secret
> > optimizations, they'll just use LLVM instead of bothering to violate
> > the GPL. The work done to make it impossible to steal GCC code was a
> > success: nobody is even interested in stealing it now. There is an
> > easier option.
>
> I admit that the only way proprietary compiler writers can compete
> with GCC is by producing a lax-permissive licensed compiler is an odd
> way to win for Free Software. But we should still make sure that GCC
> itself makes it so that users can actually get the sources of the
> compiler they are using and not just some sources that might or might
> not correspond to the binary they are using. Making sure that the code
> reaches actual users and not just some corporate hackers to create a
> proprietary compiler is what counts IMHO. And using strong copyleft
> and having a shared copyright pool of code held by an entity that can
> enforce that is still necessary IMHO.
>
> > Can we break our (already weak) ties to GNU?
>
> I hope GCC stays part of GNU, but that we might reconsider whether it
> is in the best interest of GNU and GCC as Free Software project to
> still be associated with the FSF. The GNU Assembly is having a similar
> discussion right now
> https://lists.gnu.tools/postorius/lists/assembly.lists.gnu.tools/
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>

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