Thanks for posting. I filled out the form.
LLVM relicensing update and call for help
61–70 of 198 posts
Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a matter of hot debate, and I don't want to trigger such discussion. AFAIU it is a bit of perspective of where the freedom is. With BSD there's more 'freedom' to incorporate with proprietary code, which eases commercialization. Companies like it better because of that and are likelier contributors. With GPL, while you can still monetize your code, protects the freedom of the Commons better by preventing the p…
Yeah, agree it is hotly debated and not worth discussing further. I've recently been bitten by GPL and it's fresh on my mind how insidious it can be. That said, I work in commercial environment where BSD-licensed software is highly regarded.
Saying that corporations prefer something they can profit from without giving back vs something they can not is circular reasoning to me. Conversely if you look on the other side you'll see developers bitten by permissive software licences (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, ...).
Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#63>m8r-9yw8a5@mailinator.com "/dev/humancontroller" That one should be fun. An anonymous mail account service.
Looking at the spreadsheet, it looks like his only commit is one that changes a bunch of %lu to %zu? I think that's trivial enough that it's not copyrightable.
LLVM likely doesn't want to take the risk that a court could find it copyrightable if the author decides to file a lawsuit. My guess is that regardless of the triviality of the change they're requiring these agreements.
I am not a lawyer.
Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at the spreadsheet, it looks like his only commit is one that changes a bunch of %lu to %zu? I think that's trivial enough that it's not copyrightable.
LLVM likely doesn't want to take the risk that a court could find it copyrightable if the author decides to file a lawsuit. My guess is that regardless of the triviality of the change they're requiring these agreements. I am not a lawyer.
The article talks about options for remaining contributions for which they can't get in touch with the contributor, and says:
"We can check if copyright even applies to the particular contribution. Very small contributions may not be covered by copyright, and hence may not need a license agreement."
Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which does point to the hidden danger of the FSF licenses when “any later version” exists.
It's not exactly hidden when it's clearly stated in the license, and relatively common practice to omit that clause.
I don't think most people expect the next version of the license to ... lead to a completely different license.
Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#66Racket had to do this to go from lGPL to Mit, it was a long process. But they did it to make the language more accessible to developers. Developers are scared away by lGPL. Not all contributions were relicensed (resulting in code being rewritten), and we lost some code in the standard library (the csv parser). Now Racket is trying to make it more friendly to people by created a new language (called Rhombus for now) t…
Thanks, I was just thinking this month how I would like to write lisp without parens.
Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#67Racket had to do this to go from lGPL to Mit, it was a long process. But they did it to make the language more accessible to developers. Developers are scared away by lGPL. Not all contributions were relicensed (resulting in code being rewritten), and we lost some code in the standard library (the csv parser). Now Racket is trying to make it more friendly to people by created a new language (called Rhombus for now) t…
Many major corporations (like, say, IBM) have no problem with LGPL. Where did you find a bunch of developers who thought it was a problem?
It's not the developers who are afraid, it's the companies who want to use the code for free, for proprietary purpose, and redistribute it. They want to take as much as possible but don't want to give anything.
Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, how does the GPL promise that versus the other common open source licenses? E.g MIT, BSD or Apache?
As I understand it: MIT code can be freely taken into proprietary fork, with software modified and sold and no patches contributed. Not sure how often it happens? Has it actually happened and is it a plausible attack? Nowadays at least AGPL is needed to defang "and we will sell it as service rather than selling software" workaround for GPL.
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Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at the spreadsheet, it looks like his only commit is one that changes a bunch of %lu to %zu? I think that's trivial enough that it's not copyrightable.
LLVM likely doesn't want to take the risk that a court could find it copyrightable if the author decides to file a lawsuit. My guess is that regardless of the triviality of the change they're requiring these agreements. I am not a lawyer.
It is an anonymous e mail address, there is no way for anyone can actually prove that they are the contributer.
not a lawyer, obviously
Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help
#70> That made it impossible for some companies to contribute.
It did all right regardless. Why bother with coddling the companies? As someone who wants software patents to die in a fire, I think coddling of this kind is counterproductive in the long run. I do buy the rest of their arguments though.