Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

GCC 4.2.1 Released

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the licensing-with-drama dept.

larry bagina writes "GCC 4.2.1 was released 4 days ago. Although this minor update would otherwise be insignificant, it will be the final GPL v2 release; all future releases will be GPL v3. Some key contributors are grumbling over this change and have privately discussed a fork to stay as GPL v2. The last time GCC forked (EGCS), the FSF conceded defeat. How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?"

4 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. I call bull. by c0l0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm very interested in everything Free Software, and have been following developments around GPLv3 and its adoption rather closely. Apart from some flaimbaits proclaiming how $CORP was going to abandon GCC (or anything else) after going for v3 of GPL, there is no evidence whatsoever supporting that this might actually be considered by anyone important - or in case there is, it wasn't visible enough for me to spot it.

    So, user number 561269, would you please elaborate on the subject and cite any credible source supporting your view that a major contributor to GCC is considering to fork and "have it their way"? Your posting thoroughly lacks that kind of information right now, and therefore I think it deserves being tagged bogus or useless.

    Thanks in advance for clearing this up.

    - c0l0
    (who's growing tired of all this anti-GPLv3-FUD swellig so much recently fast)

    --
    :%s/Open Source/Free Software/g

    YTARY!
  2. meanwhile, the evidence is missing by H4x0r+Jim+Duggan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's worth noting that the linked to article actually contains nothing about GCC developers complaining about GPLv3.

    --
    Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
  3. Possibly, but not legal ones by Chemisor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I maintain a more or less portable OSS project (uSTL - an STL implementation) and I have had to make at least a few changes for each compiler release. Sometimes it happens due to new warnings that catch potential bugs I didn't know about. Sometimes it is due to policy changes (like the stricter aliasing rules in gcc 4), and sometimes there are new features I want to take advantage of.

    Since I am strongly opposed to GPLv3 and anything that uses it, I am not going to upgrade my gcc any further than 4.2.1, which I'll probably do today. This means that uSTL, and my other five projects on SourceForge, may have problems compiling on later gcc releases, even though I will not intentionally put any incompatibilities in my code. Not being able to predict the future, I don't know whether these problems would be minor ones or major ones, but I do know that unless they expose some fundamental problem with my code, I will reject any bugs related to them and state explicitly that any gcc > 4.2.1 is not supported and never will be.

    Now, you probably wouldn't care about this. After all, I only had a few thousand downloads - a minute fraction of the developers in the world. And you might say "oh, who needs this guy's code anyway?" But I have a feeling I'm not the only one, and I do occasionally contribute to projects other than my own. Perhaps you don't care if you lose my skills and the skills of all those other developers, but I suspect that they do all add up to quite a bit, and while you might not notice it at first, the GPLv3 camp might get lonelier and emptier as time passes.

  4. Re:The threat... by Nelson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Mark maintains GCC. He's basically the project leader.


    I read the GCC mailing list. I haven't heard or seen any grumbling. Nothing I'd call significant. The most grumbling I've read is on how to deal with the branching and labeling/versioning which always seems to be a GCC issue; it's a major release number with no new features, when major release number imply new features... Read this. There are closed branches of GCC, ones that vendors may add custom support for their hardware to, stuff like that, those people will have to change things. There was some discussion about how you license patches, purely an academic discussion on licensing though. Like I said, I haven't seen any grumbling and it simply doesn't affect end-users.


    I also read LKML and I don't think that that is terribly significant, Linus brings up some points that seem to go un-addressed elsewhere. There is also some disagreement about how something like Linux goes through the process of being recopyrighted, you see there are people that are dead that have contributed large amounts of code. With Linux in particular, nobody was requested to re-assign their copyright to anyone like they are with GCC and a lot GNU projects. Really the only serious disagreement I've seen anywhere is from companies that exploit free software and are worried that they might have to share their substandard source code or rewrite the free components that make up the heart of their applications. Some of the hacks from the magazines are trying to stir the pot a little but that's it. It's unfortunate, some of the folks that really benefit the most from free software, folks that have products that exist because free software makes it possible for them to afford to make software, are now trying to attack and undermine the very software they depend upon.