llvm dev - Sep 2012 - [LLVMdev] Offer of membership to LLVM into the Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.

Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> writes:
> Yes, we would like to make it easier for companies and individuals to
> donate money, but also we need a way to be able to spend it.  The
> University of Illinois is our current solution - they are capable of
> accepting money and keep it in an ear-marked account, but our requests
> to actually spend it (e.g. for student travel) are outstripping their
> time resources, particularly because the University folks that end up
> having to do this aren't used to dealing with open source projects.
Ah, makes perfect sense.
> We are not interested in copyright enforcement at all.  In personal
> discussions with Bradley, he mentioned that they may be able to help
> us move the codebase to the MIT license, which would clarify that
> issue as well as resolve the current issues around runtime libraries.
Thanks for clarifying, this is helpful.  What's the motivation for
moving to the MIT license?  Something more than general familiarity?

What's the issue with runtime libraries?

Thanks!

                           -David

On Sep 19, 2012, at 3:56 PM, dag at cray.com wrote:
> Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> writes:
>> We are not interested in copyright enforcement at all.  In personal
>> discussions with Bradley, he mentioned that they may be able to help
>> us move the codebase to the MIT license, which would clarify that
>> issue as well as resolve the current issues around runtime libraries.
> 
> Thanks for clarifying, this is helpful.  What's the motivation for
> moving to the MIT license?  Something more than general familiarity?
> 
> What's the issue with runtime libraries?
I Am Not A Lawyer, etc….

My understanding is that the issue is about the "advertising" clause
in the UIUC license, similar to old-style BSD licenses.  It generally isn't
much of a problem to reproduce the copyright header in the documentation for a
compiler that is based on LLVM.  However, it's not an appropriate clause for
a runtime library that will be linked into applications compiled *by* LLVM.  We
don't want to force our users to have an LLVM copyright header included with
their binaries just because we linked them against compiler-rt.  That is why
compiler-rt is dual licensed with the MIT license today.

This, then, creates the issue that we have LLVM sub-projects that do not have
the same license as the main project, which in turn means we can't free move
code between the various sub-projects and the main project.  I know that the
Address Sanitizer guys have had issues with this when developing their runtime
library.

--Owen

On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:04:02 -0700
Owen Anderson <resistor at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sep 19, 2012, at 3:56 PM, dag at cray.com wrote:
> 
> > Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> writes:
> >> We are not interested in copyright enforcement at all.  In
personal
> >> discussions with Bradley, he mentioned that they may be able to
> >> help us move the codebase to the MIT license, which would clarify
> >> that issue as well as resolve the current issues around runtime
> >> libraries.
> > 
> > Thanks for clarifying, this is helpful.  What's the motivation for
> > moving to the MIT license?  Something more than general familiarity?
> > 
> > What's the issue with runtime libraries?
> 
> I Am Not A Lawyer, etc….
> 
> My understanding is that the issue is about the "advertising"
clause
> in the UIUC license, similar to old-style BSD licenses.  It generally
> isn't much of a problem to reproduce the copyright header in the
> documentation for a compiler that is based on LLVM.  However, it's
> not an appropriate clause for a runtime library that will be linked
> into applications compiled *by* LLVM.  We don't want to force our
> users to have an LLVM copyright header included with their binaries
> just because we linked them against compiler-rt.  That is why
> compiler-rt is dual licensed with the MIT license today.
I am supportive of a licensing change. The MIT license contains the
"substantial portions" qualifier, which seems fairly ambiguous, and
does not specify whether 'copies ... of the software' includes
binaries, etc. I think that the Boost license is better in this
regard.

 -Hal
> 
> This, then, creates the issue that we have LLVM sub-projects that do
> not have the same license as the main project, which in turn means we
> can't free move code between the various sub-projects and the main
> project.  I know that the Address Sanitizer guys have had issues with
> this when developing their runtime library.
> 
> --Owen
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu         http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu
> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev


-- 
Hal Finkel
Postdoctoral Appointee
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory

On 9/19/12 6:04 PM, Owen Anderson wrote:
> On Sep 19, 2012, at 3:56 PM, dag at cray.com wrote:
>
>> Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> writes:
>>> We are not interested in copyright enforcement at all.  In personal
>>> discussions with Bradley, he mentioned that they may be able to
help
>>> us move the codebase to the MIT license, which would clarify that
>>> issue as well as resolve the current issues around runtime
libraries.
>> Thanks for clarifying, this is helpful.  What's the motivation for
>> moving to the MIT license?  Something more than general familiarity?
>>
>> What's the issue with runtime libraries?
> I Am Not A Lawyer, etc….
>
> My understanding is that the issue is about the "advertising"
clause in the UIUC license, similar to old-style BSD licenses.
Disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the UIUC license does not have the 
infamous advertising clause.  The infamous BSD advertising clause 
required any *advertisements* to note the names of contributors; that 
gets problematic when you have lots of contributors.  LLVM has never had 
this problem as we made sure to avoid it from the very beginning.
> It generally isn't much of a problem to reproduce the copyright header
in the documentation for a compiler that is based on LLVM.
Correct.  Furthermore, I think it's a desirable feature of the license.
>    However, it's not an appropriate clause for a runtime library that
will be linked into applications compiled *by* LLVM.  We don't want to force
our users to have an LLVM copyright header included with their binaries just
because we linked them against compiler-rt.  That is why compiler-rt is dual
licensed with the MIT license today.
It sounds like your concern is with the clause that requires binary 
distributions of the code to contain the copyright notice and other 
legal stuff.  Just to be picky, that's not the infamous BSD advertising 
clause; you're talking about another (completely valid but different) 
problem.

That said, it sounds like compiler-rt is already dual licensed, so it 
seems like the problem is solved.  Is there another problem with the 
UIUC license on core LLVM?

-- John T.

>
> This, then, creates the issue that we have LLVM sub-projects that do not
have the same license as the main project, which in turn means we can't free
move code between the various sub-projects and the main project.  I know that
the Address Sanitizer guys have had issues with this when developing their
runtime library.
>
> --Owen
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu         http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu
> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev