From: Charles W. <cwi...@us...> - 2010-11-20 07:33:50
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On 11/19/2010 6:33 PM, Cesar Strauss wrote: > On 11/19/2010 12:24 PM, Charles Wilson wrote: >> FWIW, and contrary to my earlier claims, *nothing* in mingw64's runtime >> or w32api derives in any way from our mingwrt or w32api, from what I can >> tell. As far as I can see, it is a completely clean reimplementation. >> AND, even tho we at mingw.org have long thought that "they" at mingw64 >> simply accepted any w32api patch from any contributor without asking >> hard questions about provenance like we do ("Is this documented at >> msdn.com? How did you develop this patch?") -- I'm told this is NOT >> true. Every contribution goes thru the same chinese firewall... > > In that light, would mingw64's files be an acceptable source for > mingw.org patches (provided the license is compatible)? Well, see, that's the problem. There are actually two questions: #1 are we (mingw.org) satisfied with what *I* have been told about the development process of mingw64? *IF* what I have been told is true -- in each and every instance, not just 'most' or 'often' or 'nominally but exceptions abound' (and we have to take their word for it; it's not like we have any third-party inspector saying "Yep, mingw64 is actually doing what they told Chuck they are doing") -- then it would probably be ok, subject to licensing concerns. But that's quite a big "if". #2, of course: those licensing concerns. We want to continue to release under public domain -- which really means we can only use contributions that are ALSO released under the public domain. SOME of mingw64's stuff is not, _exactly_, PD: there is some LGPL and some ZPL (Zope Public License) stuff in there, although most of it is PD. -- Chuck |