GCC To No Longer Require Copyright Assignment To The Free Software Foundation

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GCC To No Longer Require Copyright Assignment To The Free Software Foundation

In addition to the GCC 9.4 release today, the GCC Steering Committee announced today that they are dropping their long-running policy of requiring copyright assignment to the Free Software Foundation for all code contributions...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GCC-Drops-FSF-CA

[scottishduck]

Good.

[wizard69]

Now all they need to do is something about GPL3 and the provisions there that also drove away users.

As for Apple I still believe that they saw huge potential in the way LLVM/Clang worked. As such I'm not convinced that copyright assignment was the only driver of the move off GCC.

[jamesblacklock]

I have mixed feelings about GPLv3 vs GPLv2, but in general, driving away contributors who don't support the Free Software movement is a good thing IMO. Not because we don't want those people involved, but because the Free Software movement is more important.

[Redfoxmoon]

Now all they need to do is something about GPL3 and the provisions there that also drove away users.

As for Apple I still believe that they saw huge potential in the way LLVM/Clang worked. As such I'm not convinced that copyright assignment was the only driver of the move off GCC.

Apple doesn't want to contribute code back to the wider world, their LLVM is not mainline LLVM :^)

[ddriver]

Now all they need to do is something about GPL3 and the provisions there that also drove away users.

A shame it will be about 2 decades too late. The damage is already done - the plague of gpl pushed end user software makers away from catering to a m$ alternative even when there was one available, as a result, m$ became a monopoly and one of the major scourges of this world.

I find it ironic that m$ probably makes far more money and more use on gpl software than all of the independent end users on the planet combined, those same end users that the fsf rose to protect from m$. Great results guys, you really did it, didn't ya...

[ireri]

You people should understand that free software =/= open software and that the GPL3 is like that for a reason.

[ksec]

>Especially these days with the FSF coming under fire and even some talking of possible forks to the GNU Compiler Collection

What were those problems?

[ezst036]

This is a great move. As long as the end result benefits open source, do we really need it to be assigned directly to the FSF? It smacks of organizational greed and nothing else.

"Give it to us! Gimme gimme gimme" is the impression that could be taken by that old policy.

[CommunityMember]

Apple doesn't want to contribute code back to the wider world, their LLVM is not mainline LLVM :^)

Apple certainly has proprietary extensions and plugins with LLVM, but last I looked a few years ago, individuals clearly associated with Apple (i.e. had apple.com email addresses) had something like 20% of the total commits to LLVM. That percentage may have gone down a bit now that other organizations have joined the LLVM bandwagon, but Apple is clearly a significant contributor to the public code base.