

Apple Open-Sources Grand Central Dispatch (Snow Leopard Multithreading) - javanix
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/apple-opens-gcd-challenges-impede-adoption-on-linux.ars

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kqr2
Some previous discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817416>

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javanix
I'm not too familiar with how various Linux applications are licensed
currently, so perhaps someone else can enlighten me.

Does anyone know of any major GPLv2-only apps out there that would provide a
major roadblock to porting this to Linux?

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wmf
I think this article exaggerates the potential licensing problems. There are
few GPLv2-only apps, it's common for app developers to make license exceptions
(especially in such an inoffensive case as GPLv2+Apache), and none of that
would prevent other apps from using GCD.

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FooBarWidget
Yes. For example back in the days Mozilla wasn't dual MPL/LGPL licensed, the
Galeon web browser contacted all contributors to modify the license to
explicitly allow linking to gtkmozembed, the Mozilla renderer for GTK.

The hardest part is contacting all contributors. But once you've contacted
them, people rarely object to adding a linking exception.

~~~
javanix
Ah, thanks for the info, both of you.

Here's hoping some useful Linux uses can come out of this - packet-based
multithreading seems like a useful abstraction to me, though I am an
admittedly inexperienced in multithreaded programming outside of class.

