Re: Non-gcc releases

[Etienne Gagnon <gagnon dot etienne_m at uqam dot ca>]

Hi all,

From Tom's initial message and the the various replies that were sent,
I think it is obvious that "libffi" is conceptually a very distinct
project than GCC.  All agree that libffi's maitenance and release
schedule must not be tied to GCC's schedule.  I would go a step further
and say that code maintenance issues like the rules for contributing
(e.g. should copyright be assigned to FSF?  Should the GCC steering
committee have any word on who can contribute or not to libffi?) are
distinct.

The main argument, so far, to keep libffi within the GCC tree was
because GCC maintainers would be auditing its code.

So, my question for those whi know the answer, is:
- Would it really make a difference if libffi's main code repository
was separate from GCC?  I.e. wouldn't gcj's people still be auditing
the code, as well as all the other people of GCC working on pieces
that use libffi?  Wouldn't the GCC people that think their code could
be affected by bugs in libffi still be auditing it, specially if
libffi's code was easily available, and even write access would be
easy to get?

In your answer, you can take into account my following proposal, and
even suggest improvements and/or debate it.

PROPOSAL
========

I have thought longly about it, and I am really willing to provide
the resources for hosting and maintaining libffi.  Given's libffi's
very permissive license, I would provide repository write access to
any contributor that agrees to the license, to maintain high standard
code, and the ovious legalese: contributor should be real author of
contribution, but *without* requiring any copyright assignment.  I
would accept FSF copyrighted code (e.g. if people prefer to assign
their copyright, I would encourage them to assign it the the FSF,
if the FSF is willing to accept their code).

I am willing to take charge of the day-to-day maintenance issues, either
by doing it myself or delegating it to another volunteer (or to one
of my students).  I am not specifically an ABI specialist, but I have
some experience managing/hosting Free software projects, and I know a
few things about low-level issues (given my relatively strong compiler
and architecture background).  I just never happened to put my hands
deeply into it, but I do teach computer architecture and compilers,
telling students about things like register windows and so on.

Any opinion?

Etienne


--
Etienne M. Gagnon, Ph.D.             http://www.info.uqam.ca/~egagnon/
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