The FSF could have these changes if they wanted if they didn't require copyright assignment.
Personally I don't contribute to FSF projects because copyright assignments are a PITA. I can see how a company that doesn't need to contribute to GCC anymore just doesn't care enough to initiate the requisite legal work.
* Commit your bugfix
* 'git send-email --to=git@vger.kernel.org -1'
With the GNU model:
* Commit your bugfix / make a patch
* Send your patch to the maintainer of the project
* The maintainer has to look in a central file if you already assigned copyright to the FSF
* If not, they send you an email 'would you be willing to do this'
* You reply, "sure, send me the form"
* They send you this: https://gforge.inria.fr/scm/viewvc.php/misc/www/request-disc...
* You fill in the form, and thus hand over your snail mail address to the maintainer and the FSF
* They send you another form (snail mail!)
* You fill it in and send it back (snail mail!)
* They receive your form and add it to the list
* Your bugfix is now allowed to go into the GNU repository
I'd had have to do that if I submitted a non-trivial change to the FSF, just finding an alternative program that I can use and fix is easier, so I've done that instead of sending patches to them.
"...In practice, since the FSF cares about copyright assignment, this probably means that..."
"Apple does not have an internal process to assign code to the FSF anymore. I would focus on the code that is already assigned to the FSF." http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-09/msg00132.html
Things can change and Apple is a great contributor to LLVM, but Apple appear to have no trouble with the GPL, only trouble with gcc, but that is easy to understand.
Just like I tell my kids, if you can't get along with the neighbor, don't go play in their back yard. Sounds like Apple is taking that advice and people in the free community are offended.
