Re: [Tinycc-devel] Re: Attempt to create a host on ShareSource failed

[Rob Landley]

On Thursday 22 November 2007 10:02:56 Marc Andre Tanner wrote:
> but of course IANAL.

I'd like to point out that I have been paying a _little_ bit of attention to 
copyright, GPL, and LGPL over the years:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8588416581.html
http://www.linux.com/feature/120629
http://lwn.net/Articles/202113/
http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween9.html
http://www.catb.org/~esr/hackerlore/sco-vs-ibm.html
http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2001051000220PS
http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000502.htm

> I asked him off list for the reason behind the 
> license change, he basically doesn't want that his code could end up
> under GPLv3.

That's primarily fallout from Bruce Perens trying to cram GPLv3 down my throat 
(http://lwn.net/Articles/202106/).  I already thought GPLv3 was a bad 
license, but going out of my way to prevent anything I write from being 
licensed under it is thanks to Bruce.

That incident was essentially due to the instability of dual licensing, too.  
Code under GPLv2 can't be relicensed.  Code under LGPL, "GPLv2 or later", or 
something like BSD can.  If you release code that _can_ be relicensed, you 
really can't object when it _is_.  Just like people who release BSD licensed 
code can't object when it winds up incorporated into proprietary programs.

> I personally don't care which license is used but i think 
> whoever wrote most of the code should decide the license and even if
> it's legal to change the license it's not particularly nice (see the
> whole BSD/Linux Wireless driver ath5k issue).

Why is it not nice?  The license explicitly allowed it.  I asked Fabrice 
(still the nominal maintainer of this project) if he had any objections.  I 
haven't closed the source, it's now under the same license as the Linux 
kernel.  And you still have all the old versions under the original license, 
including all the changes I made before I exercised LGPL clause 3.

I haven't taken anything away from the old project except my presence, which I 
was _asked_ to do:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/tinycc-devel/2007-10/msg00020.html

So I made my fork an official project of its own, with its own mailing list 
and web page:
http://landley.net/mailman/listinfo/tinycc
http://landley.net/code/tinycc

I'm offering the new project to anyone who wants to use it, under the same 
license as the Linux kernel, and I take bug reports and patches on an open 
mailing list with archive.  That seems like open source to me.

I'm using "tcc" to refer to the old one and "tinycc" to refer to the new one.  
(The old project's a bit fuzzy about which one it is, but I'm trying to be 
consistent in the new one.)

I'm currently redoing the build system (mostly done), making everything work 
properly on an x86-64 host (also mostly done), getting it to work against 
uClibc and such more gracefully, fixing a few more bugs on my todo list, and 
aiming to have a release out by the end of the year.  Here's a google video 
on why time based releases are a good thing:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5503858974016723264

The goal I currently have for the release after that is adding an x86-64 
target (that's what my laptop's running now), and then I'll get back to 
seeing about getting the sucker to build an unmodified Linux kernel and 
uClibc and such.

I check here from time to time to see if anybody's found any interesting new 
bugs, but haven't been posting here.  My new project has a mailing list, and 
this isn't it.

Rob.

P.S.  I do note that this thread was about me and my new project already, but 
I don't plan to post any more to it.  If you're interested in my version, 
feel free to join the list for it.  Otherwise, have fun here and I'll leave 
you to it.
-- 
"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code."
  - Ken Thompson.