Re: tac feature suggestion

[Eric Blake]

On 06/03/2014 02:53 PM, braultbaron wrote:

> I guess that, in both cases, I will adapt the existing source
> to fit my need. If this change is welcomed, I would be pleased
> to send my source code. If someone finds some clever way to
> achieve the same result without modifying the existing program,
> I will be happy to use the trick instead of the modified program.
> The simpler, the better.

Sure, you are welcome to send patches.  Some starter hints:
http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/HACKING

> 
> About licensing stuff: I don't want my name anywhere,
> and all the code I produce must stay free software.

Alas, you are misunderstanding something about free software.  Although
anonymous software can be open source, it will not be free (that is,
providing the four freedoms guaranteed by the GPL).  Software can only
be free when there is a copyright holder associated with it; the only
way to preserve free software is to have a legal basis to enforce the
copyleft directives that are granted by the GPL by virtue of following
copyright law.  In the case of coreutils, we require that non-trivial
submissions have copyright assigned to the Free Software Foundation, and
track all such authors that have done so, as a conscious choice that it
is easier to have a single copyright holder than to track down multiple
submitters.  If you would like to start the process of copyright
assignment (a prerequisite for us accepting your patches upstream), see
here for more details:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html
http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/tree/doc/Copyright/request-assign.future

If not, you can wait for someone else to write a patch that does the
same thing, for purposes of upstream inclusion.  But as this is free
software, of course you are allowed to use your own patch locally, even
if we don't take on the legal risk of accepting it upstream.

> 
> P.S. I replied to the whole list. Is it correct, or should I
> have replied only to you?

You did the right thing - we very much prefer keeping the list in the
loop, so that the conversation is publicly archived and so that others
may chime in mid-thread (as I did here).

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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