Re: Apple's Obj-C future

[David Ayers]

Gregory John Casamento schrieb:

> Apple will, per the terms of the GPL, be obliged to contribute back
> the code for ObjC2.0, if they made the changes to gcc to implement it.
> Later, GJC
> 

Just to clarify, there is no obligation to contribute the changes to
FSF's GCC.  There is an obligation to license the GCC parts to their
users under the GPL.  From a legal standpoint the users may then
contribute that back to FSF's GCC.  Yet by policy GCC is rather strict
with respect to only accepting material which is copyright-assigned.  I
do not know whether the blanket copyright assignment from Apple to the
FSF for their GCC contributions would include contributions by third
parties.

OTOH, Apple has an interest in sharing the maintenance burden.  But
their contributions have historically causes portability issues.  So I
would expect that they will want to contribute most of it to FSF's GCC
but be prepared that many things may only work on Darwin or in
conjunction with their runtime or in the worst case some with other
proprietary code.

Cheers,
David