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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

#101

Post by orra »

rocqua wrote: post #95
chayleaf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can't copy MIT-licensed files without crediting it either. And you can statically link GPL code, assuming you release the source to all app users. You might be confusing it with LGPL, which says you can link to proprietary apps dynamically, but have to release source in all other cases.

I thought useing GPL code without modifications was acceptable without any licensing, or is that a 'lesser GPL' license?

You're thinking on the LGPL.

The GPL is the prototypical copyleft licence, designed to encourage the liberation of software, in part via its dependencies.

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#103

Post by anticensor »

> 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.

This is not the case in the United Kingdom, where the threshold of creativity for copyright is basically zero.

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#104

Post by kergonath »

rocqua wrote: post #89
purple_turtle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple's OS is a fork of BSD without the fork being open source.

It’s more complicated than that. It was not a fork, they just copied some parts of FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The kernel is XNU, and descended from Mach. Also, Darwin (the base OS, which includes the BSD bits) is open source. What isn’t is the GUI on top of it, which comes from OPENSTEP.

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#105

Post by TravelPiglet »

rocqua wrote: post #89
purple_turtle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple's OS is a fork of BSD without the fork being open source.

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#106

Post by still_grokking »

rocqua wrote: post #95
chayleaf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can't copy MIT-licensed files without crediting it either. And you can statically link GPL code, assuming you release the source to all app users. You might be confusing it with LGPL, which says you can link to proprietary apps dynamically, but have to release source in all other cases.

I thought useing GPL code without modifications was acceptable without any licensing, or is that a 'lesser GPL' license?

You can use GPL code however you want.

You have only obligations when you distribute the results. Whatever you do in your private basement is completely unaffected by that. The GPL gives you freedom to do whatever you please. That's the whole point of it!

When you distribute binaries resulting form work based on GPL code than the people receiving those binaries (and only them) are eligible to get alongside the source code which allows them to rebuild the binaries you distributed to them. That makes sure that those other people also have the same freedom as you to do whatever they please with the programs and code. So the GPL preserves freedom among users of GPL code.

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#108

Post by seabird »

pjmlp wrote: post #97
Decabytes wrote: post #32

Racket 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…

Without GPL, people wouldn't be enjoying their Linux distribution, but naturally this is a moot point given how the BSD distributions have taken over the UNIX world.

Commenting on BSDs losing out to Linux seems like a weird dig in this context, considering that a large contributing factor to that was legal threats from AT&T.

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#109

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

supermatt wrote: post #107

Is it really OK that the top of the license calls it "Apache License"? https://foundation.llvm.org/relicensing/LICENSE.txt You need to scroll to the bottom to see that its not.

Yes because it is the Apache license. You are free to disregard the exceptions if you do not want to use them.

Re: LLVM relicensing update and call for help

#110

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

Smithalicious wrote: post #79
Decabytes wrote: post #32

Racket 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…

> Developers are scared away by lGPL. For me it's very much the opposite, I refuse to contribute code to anything licensed under the MIT/BSD/etc family of languages. It makes me sad to see so much confusion, incorrect information, naiveté and paranoia going around regarding the GPL that it's scaring people off. I think that most of these people would feel differently if they understood better. I think the systematic…

The number of people who refuse to commit to MIT/BSD/etc. code is almost not existing, the number of people who refuse or cannot commit to GPL is plentiful.

> It makes me sad to see so much confusion, incorrect information, naiveté and paranoia going around regarding the GPL

I agree, there are still too many people who think the GPL is _just_ another license. It's not and many figured this out the hard way after they already accepted contributions under the GPL and moving away has become hard to impossible.

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