GCC, LLVM, Copyleft, Companies, and Non-Profits
Charles Stanhope, Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), David Thompson, Jason Self and 10 others likes this.
Scorpio20, Scorpio20, Stefano Zacchiroli, sazius and 3 others shared this.
@bkuhn Very interesting blog post.
The part about the GCC RTL exception is of particular personal interest for me since I was still at SFLC during the early stages, though it was not too long before I left SFLC to join Red Hat. Of all my 'late', post-GPLv3 SFLC work the GCC RTL exception was probably my favorite and I suppose I wish I could have stayed to work with you and Karen on the completion of the drafting.
I hadn't known you'd've preferred to see the GCC RTL exception done and released in time to go with GPLv3. It might have been a better idea to do that. The only thing I can say in the other direction is that the GCC RTL exception (the early versions that I was helping you with) benefited from the experience of drafting GPLv3, AGPLv3 and LGPLv3. I think I remember telling you at some point 'this is the first draft of GPLv4'. Which in retrospect may have been a silly thing to say but it captured something of what I was thinking at the time.
Finally, I found it disturbing to hear you say that "a prominent corporate lawyer with an interest in LLVM told me to my face that his company would continue spreading false rumors that I'd use LLVM's membership in Conservancy to push the LLVM developers toward copyleft".
The part about the GCC RTL exception is of particular personal interest for me since I was still at SFLC during the early stages, though it was not too long before I left SFLC to join Red Hat. Of all my 'late', post-GPLv3 SFLC work the GCC RTL exception was probably my favorite and I suppose I wish I could have stayed to work with you and Karen on the completion of the drafting.
I hadn't known you'd've preferred to see the GCC RTL exception done and released in time to go with GPLv3. It might have been a better idea to do that. The only thing I can say in the other direction is that the GCC RTL exception (the early versions that I was helping you with) benefited from the experience of drafting GPLv3, AGPLv3 and LGPLv3. I think I remember telling you at some point 'this is the first draft of GPLv4'. Which in retrospect may have been a silly thing to say but it captured something of what I was thinking at the time.
Finally, I found it disturbing to hear you say that "a prominent corporate lawyer with an interest in LLVM told me to my face that his company would continue spreading false rumors that I'd use LLVM's membership in Conservancy to push the LLVM developers toward copyleft".