Is Apple Now Blocking Contributions To GCC?

[XorEaxEax]

So, isn't this in effect not a copyright or authorship attribution dispute, but factually about the FSF wanting software patent licenses?

Why would they want software patent licences, they are AGAINST software patents, they lobby against software patents? How would they approriate these imaginary software licences? Go through the code contributed and send parts of it to the patent office? Seriously, now who is playing dumb...

From the horse's mouth (FSF) themselves:

Our lawyers have told us that to be in the best position to enforce the GPL in court against violators, we should keep the copyright status of the program as simple as possible. We do this by asking each contributor to either assign the copyright on his contribution to the FSF, or disclaim copyright on it and thus put it in the public domain.
We also ask individual contributors to get copyright disclaimers from their employers (if any) so that we can be sure those employers won't claim to own the contributions.

[milki]

So, isn't this in effect not a copyright or authorship attribution dispute, but factually about the FSF wanting software patent licenses?

Why would they want software patent licences, they are AGAINST software patents, they lobby against software patents? How would they approriate these imaginary software licences? Go through the code contributed and send parts of it to the patent office? Seriously, now who is playing dumb...

The partial quoter, eh?

The essential difference between GNU GPL and GPLv3 are the (sw) patent clauses. And the FSF is unhappy with GPL2-copyright-only contributions. Why?

[XorEaxEax]

The partial quoter, eh?

The essential difference between GNU GPL and GPLv3 are the (sw) patent clauses. And the FSF is unhappy with GPL2-copyright-only contributions. Why?

What GPL2 only copyright contributions? The Apple contributions were gplv2 or _later_?

And I quoted what was your conclusion (out of a VERY long post), please explain what else you felt I should quote.

[XorEaxEax]

And as for your ramblings about FSF and patents, you would do well to watch this FSF funded film about patents, it gives you an understanding of FSF's stance aswell as the absurdity of the US software patent system.

http://patentabsurdity.com/

[KAMiKAZOW]

LLVM has Apple, are there any others?

At the very least one person from Google is contributing as well – Rafael Espindola.
As for others: Not sure. I skimmed through LLVM's commit log a bit and it has many contributors. Of those a large part commit using their private mail addresses. Even Apple's Chris Lattner is not registered with his @apple.com address. So I don't know if they are paid by someone to work on LLVM.

[milki]

What GPL2 only copyright contributions? The Apple contributions were gplv2 or _later_?

And I quoted what was your conclusion (out of a VERY long post), please explain what else you felt I should quote.

I'm sure you'll intentionally overread it again, but let me mention it anyway. I was rambling about the inherent GPL v3 sw patent grant. You've just quoted the last sentence and cherrypicked the last word to go offtopic about.
(OTOH it's very generous of you to educate me about the FSFs actual stance on software patents. Maybe you should also recite the four freedoms, just in case I missed them too.)

The question I raised was why the FSF isn't happy with a purely GPL2+ licensed code contribution. GCC is GPL2+ ANY LATER LICENSE. But this in itself doesn't allow the FSF to relicense it as GPLv3, because that relicensing would miss the Apple sw patent voucher.

Your FSF citation of the FSFs concern about suitability of assigned copyrights in actual infringement cases is relevant to the discussion, and explains why the FSF isn't happy about plain GPL code submissions. It doesn't explain why the FSF is dishonest about using the GNU GPL, when a "FSF Assign-Us-Your-Copyrights License" or extra clause is what they really want.

[Ze..]

According to some opinions in this very thread, it is apparently not perfectly fine. It seems some people believe Apple is at fault here. I too believe it's perfectly fine. I'm against those (Michael?) who claim that Apple is now suddenly "blocking contributions", which is just BS. They're not blocking anything. Quite the contrary, they released everything they needed to release as GPL code.

What matters here is Apple's intent , Apple is clearly blocking FSF's adoption of the code because they have a long history of contributing code to GCC under FSF's policy.

The really pertitient question is whether Apples motives are 'clean' or nice and frankly I doubt that.

I disagree strongly with copyright assignment and frankly I favour a stronger license like the AGPLv3 because they better protect users and developers freedoms. I used to favour weaker licenses but as I've aged and seen the landscape evolve over the last decade and a half I've seen the wisdom of stronger protections and a distributed copyright assignment.

[bridgman]

The given rationale is:

* The FSF requires code authorship vacation, because they might want to republish it under a better license somewhen (a better license from the FSF?)

What I don't understand is:

* The GCC code is already published under "GNU GPL v2.1 OR ANY LATER VERSION"

So legally and technically the FSF could already relicense it under the GNU GPLv3. Obviously if the FSF itself relicenses Apples code under the GPLv3, it won't implicitely receive a software patent grant from Apple on their GCC/ObjC extensions.

I don't believe the "or later" licensing actually allows a third party to relicense the code (they need copyright assignment for that), it simply gives the recipient the ability to follow the terms and conditions of a later license if they choose to do so.

There is explicit wording in the v3 GPL license stating that "no additional obligations are imposed on any author or copyright holder as a result of your choosing to follow a later version" (under "v2 or later" license text) but I don't *think* that limitation applies in the case of relicensing.

See section 14 of GPL v3 for more details.

[RealNC]

The GPL allows for relicensing if you use the "any later version" clause, because GPLv3 is a valid "later version".

This is the reason btw why the Linux kernel doesn't have the "later version" clause; no one can relicense it as GPLv3.

[bridgman]

I don't think so... read section 14 of GPLv3. The "or later" license allows the code to be used as if it was under a later license, but that's not the same as re-licensing.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

If the Program specifies that a certain numbered version of the GNU General Public License “or any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that numbered version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

<snip>

Later license versions may give you additional or different permissions. However, no additional obligations are imposed on any author or copyright holder as a result of your choosing to follow a later version.

Only copyright holders can re-license.

That said, there is no 100% agreement on any of this, just varying shades of grey.