Re: Apple's Objective-C language patch

Daniel Berlin
2002-09-10T03:58:47Z

On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Andrew Cagney wrote:

> > Jason Molenda wrote:
> >
> > What is the history behind objc-exp.y? Is this from the old
> > gnustep-gdb patch that'd been floating around since the mid-90's
> > (the one that Michael Snyder wrote while at NeXT)? The Apple
> > sources have the ObjC support rolled in c-exp.y; it doesn't seem
> > unreasonable given the overlap between the two expression syntaxes.
> >
> >
> > I got everything, including objc-exp.y from the 'recent' Apple patch. I haven't looked at the latest Apple sources - I didn't know if I should do that since Andrew Cagney told me to work from the patch, but perhaps I misunderstood.
>
> Yes, I would have requested this.
>
> Believe it or not, very recently added to my things to do today list is
> to get an answer to the question: can a third party take random
> Apple/GDB sources and contribute them to the FSF.

Does Apple have a copyright assignment covering this stuff?
If so, then AFAIK, it's already "contributed" in the legal sense, since
the FSF has the copyright to it.It doesn't particular matter *where* the
copies exist (Apple's sources or the FSF sources) or who made them, only
who owns the work. where/who is only important when trying to determine
infringement. The FSF can't be infringing if it owns the work. It's a
slightly unclear issue if you've modified the sources, and have no
copyright assignment with the FSF, and contribute them to GDB (derivative
works and all that jazz).
But as long as the person contributing the apple stuff is either
1. Not making changes to the source in question (in which case their
is no question it's a copy of the original work).
*OR*
2. Has a copyright assignment for GDB work with the FSF.

then there should be no problem (assuming apple has copyright
assignment covering this stuff).

IANAL (yet), and this is not to be construed as "office legal advice".
Just rantings of a loon.
I could get you a definitive opinion fairly quickly from a lawyer if you
like (and you can answer the various assignment questions about the
code/people involved).
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