Purchasing a uClibc patch?

Rich Felker dalias at aerifal.cx
Mon Feb 7 22:25:39 UTC 2011


On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 04:32:11PM +0000, bruce bushby wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Does the uClibc community cater for "special request" patches?
> 
> I'm looking for a "posix_spawn" patch/files that I can apply before
> compiling uClibc with "buildroot"
> 
> Anyone interested? I'm assume there is no point in donating the results
> because "posix_spawn" would already be there if it was deemed necessary.

Are you aware that uClibc is distributed only under the LGPL. This
means that it's not your call whether donating the results would be
appreciated; if you distribute a modified/improved version of the
library as part of your application, you *must* distribute the
corresponding source to whomever you distribute the binaries to and
give them the same rights to these improvements under the LGPL.

You can still hire someone to make the improvements, but you can't use
the improvements in a binary-only project and refuse to disclose the
source to the improvements.

As an aside, however, posix_spawn can be implemented as a simple
library on top of existing calls like fork (or vfork) and execve,
without integrating it with the rest of libc. If you hired someone to
do this, it would work with *any* libc, and I see no reason why you
couldn't keep it closed-source if you really wanted. But considering
it'd only be 100 LoC or so, I can't imagine why you wouldn't just
donate it to improving uClibc...

Rich


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