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LLVM relicensing update and call for help

blog.llvm.org

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Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#5
> The copyright owner can be either an individual, for example the person who wrote the code originally; or a company, for example a company that employed the person who wrote the code.

Here, there be dragonnes...

I can easily see an IC agreeing to a relicensing, thinking they had full rights, but their employer, at the time, had a "shower clause," and trying to (and maybe succeeding in) getting that section of license nullified. At least, costing the LLVM a bunch of money and time.

This was one reason that I made sure that my employer did not have a "shower clause," before starting to develop a lot of open-source software.

Knowing them, I'll bet that people hired after me had to sign that away, but I was never made to sign anything like that; even retroactively.

This is a mammoth effort, and I wish them well. I suspect they have already wargamed a lot of the possible issues.

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#7
post #3

This might be the largest contributor relicensing project of any IP category: 2800 people and companies. 94% progress is impressive.

Wikipedia changed its license around 10 years ago, I think.

This was enabled by the license though (GNU Free Documentation License) so they didn't need to contact individual contributors.

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#9
post #3

This might be the largest contributor relicensing project of any IP category: 2800 people and companies. 94% progress is impressive.

Wikipedia changed its license around 10 years ago, I think.

Wikipedia was licensed under GFDL 1.2 or later, so relicensed by convincing the FSF to release an updated version of the GFDL (version 1.3) that adds a very narrowly worded clause allowing relicensing that pretty much only applied to Wikipedia.
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