[marinintim]

> a.) GLIBC is a GPL licensed project where the copyright for the code in question has been assigned to the Free Software Foundation. All code that is contributed must be copyright assigned to the Free Software Foundation. This means that, regardless of the license of the reference code, we can not use 'open source' code from other projects unless it has been explicitly copyright assigned to the FSF.

Such free software!

[dagw]

You're free to take the GNU GLIBC apply your own patches and use that patched version to compile, use and ship your own software (assuming you comply with the GPL). What you are not free to do is require that your patches be included with the official distribution of GLIBC without agreeing to their terms.

[wcoenen]

It's desirable to keep the ability to fix license issues as they pop up. But if the copyright of contributions is not assigned to a single entity, then it becomes nigh impossible to change the license of the project (e.g. to a newer version of the LGPL) because the permission of every single contributor would be required.