Re: [linuxiran] My growing interest in Apple

[Aryan Ameri]

On Monday 21 April 2003 11:08, Arash Bijanzadeh wrote:
> On Monday 21 April 2003 11:30, Aryan Ameri wrote:

> > But in order for FSF to accept changes and make Apple's improvments
> > and patches back into the main trunk, FSF states that if you want
> > your software to go in our trunk, you should give up your
> > ownership, and make FSF the copyright holder. Something that many
> > people don't like, and many big companies like apple can't accept.
>
> I really can't understand what RMS intend of this?!

The copyright holder of all GNU software is FSF.
As Arash Z explained, this does have it's pros and cons.

>
> > So the situtation that we now have in hand is that Apple's gcc is
> > much better than GNU gcc, and though Apple's gcc is gpl, the
> > improvments don't find their way back into gnu gcc.
>
> where can we get this Apple's gcc?

It only runs on Mac OS X. Ofcourse as I said, source is available, but 
one should port it to Linux, to be able to run it on Linux. Something 
which hasn't been done yet.

Instead of porting yet another compiler, the better alternative is just 
to get the improvments from it, and add them to gnu gcc. Exactly like 
what the KDE guys are doing with Apple's html engine. They are not 
porting the whole engine to Linux, they are just adding Apple's patches 
into khtml.

But as I said, FSF doesn't accept contributions if you do not give up 
your copyright.

Thers is also another interesting story. Yesterday, it was announced 
that the GNU Free Documentation License, is not in accordance with 
Debian's free software policy. In other words, according to Debian's 
rules, GNU FDL is not free (as in freedom). So they are now removing 
all licenses with FDL from Debian. This include's all GNU's documents 
and manuals.

Cheers

-- 
/* Impeach God */
                        --RMS
Aryan Ameri