On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 10:52 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier <h...@mimosa.com> wrote:
> | From: Mark Wielaard <m...@klomp.org> > > | This seems a pretty bad policy to be honest. > | Why was there no public discussion on this? > > Agreed. I also agree with the rest of Mark's message. > > (Note: I haven't contributed to GCC but I have contributed to other > copylefted code bases.) > > It is important that the pool be trustable. A tall order, but > solvable, I think. > > Two pools (FSF for old stuff, something else, for new stuff if the > contributor prefers) should be quite managable. > > This would allow, for example, moving to an updated copyleft if the > two pools agreed. It is important that the governance of the pool be > trustable. > > We've trusted the FSF and now some have qualms. A second pool would > be a check on the power of the first pool. > > Individual unassigned copyright pretty much guarantees that the > copyright terms can never be changed. I don't think that that is > optimal. > GCC's license is "GPL version 3 or later", so if there ever needed to be a GPL v4, we could move to it without needing permission from anyone. But GPL3 has been a good license for GCC; giving up the theoretical ability to change the license (other than to a later GPL) does not seem like a significant loss. Jason
