OpenBSD Founder Calling For LLVM To Face A Cataclysm Over Its Re-Licensing

[computerquip]

Ease of relicensing into anything the fuck you want has always been the gift and curse of BSD licenses (e.g. assholes like Apple can steal all their code and close the source and prevent the original authors from getting any benefit, hell they can even claim it's all their own original code if they want!). It protects users but doesn't give a fuck about developers like GPL does, that's the major difference I guess.

And this is exactly why nothing can be done about this (but this is a very good shift I think). Still I wonder why they'd be re-licensing now, this license has been working out fine for them so far right?

Also what the hell happened to the edit feature? Why can't I edit my posts anymore?

This is a gross misunderstanding of BSD licenses.

1) You do not give up copyright of any given code. This means various things including the fact that someone cannot claim that they made the code. What you're thinking of is public domain where someone gives up their copyright to a given piece.

2) Apple has been a *huge* contributor to Clang given that it's a main founder and all. You can't really knock on the founder of the project given how long they've assumed their position.

3) The main difference between BSD and GPL is that BSD licenses tend to allow distributing your code in binaries. GPL also allows this but only assuming that the code is unmodified. Any modified binaries are not permitted unless you disclose the source along with it. However, BSD does not permit distribution without a copy of the copyright notice distributed with it. They all have a clause with the same intention:

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

The licenses are actually quite readable and you don't need to be a lawyer to understand their intention. Please take 30 seconds out of your day to read them.

[peppercats]

I fail to see a good reason to not put tools under GPL, and I'm not a diehard FSF person.

[wikinevick]

I fail to see a good reason to not put tools under GPL, and I'm not a diehard FSF person.

The GPLv3 is seen as corporate unfriendly and was greatly the reason for starting LLVM on more "neutral" grounds. Hmm ... I wonder if the additional clauses break the Apache License compatibility added by the FSF. Not that it matters, I don't see a fork happening.

What Theo thinks doesn't carry much weight either: eventually they will find out that the Apache License is much less restricted than the alternative and the GPLv2 stuff they seem happy to carry.

[andrebrait]

Quite honestly, I think the only good reason for not to open source your code nowadays is if you don't want people reading your code because you know your code smells really bad/is ugly as f*ck.

(Yeah, I'm joking here... Or am I not?)

[Luke_Wolf]

I fail to see a good reason to not put tools under GPL, and I'm not a diehard FSF person.

IDEs with Clang for a start... external users of LLVM that aren't and don't want to be under GPL such as V8 and the Radeon drivers for another.

[TheBlackCat]

I fail to see a good reason to not put tools under GPL, and I'm not a diehard FSF person.

It depends on whether you want closed-source tools making use of your code or not.

[M@yeulC]

[QUOTE=rabcor;n901172]Ease of relicensing into anything the fuck you want has always been the gift and curse of BSD licenses (e.g. assholes like Apple can steal all their code and close the source and prevent the original authors from getting any benefit, hell they can even claim it's all their own original code if they want!). It protects users but doesn't give a fuck about developers like GPL does, that's the major difference I guess.

And this is exactly why nothing can be done about this (but this is a very good shift I think). Still I wonder why they'd be re-licensing now, this license has been working out fine for them so far right?

Actually, I would say the opposite: It protects developers, but f*** users who would like, for instance, to fix bugs in the proprietary product they have been given.


It depends on whether you want closed-source tools making use of your code or not.

That's why I am with , I don't see a good reason to avoid the use of programs under the GPL, whatever version it is, unless your "program" consists of the same functionality. There is plenty of ways to interface a GPL-licensed program with a proprietary one. And I think andrebrait has a point there.

That, and I am afraid that the Halloween documents' mindset is still present in a lot of companies. "Free software is basically communism", "Linux is cancer". Let's take an analogy here: your family probably doesn't rely on capitalism to feed its members, and it extends to encompass newcomers; both of with aren't necessary a bad thing, but rather necessary for long-term survival. Let's call "communism" a good thing in this example.

I wish more companies would see the value in free software, and contribute more things back (with a preference for GPLv3).

[M@yeulC]

Ease of relicensing into anything the fuck you want has always been the gift and curse of BSD licenses (e.g. assholes like Apple can steal all their code and close the source and prevent the original authors from getting any benefit, hell they can even claim it's all their own original code if they want!). It protects users but doesn't give a fuck about developers like GPL does, that's the major difference I guess.

And this is exactly why nothing can be done about this (but this is a very good shift I think). Still I wonder why they'd be re-licensing now, this license has been working out fine for them so far right?

Actually, I would say the opposite: It protects developers, but f*** users who would like, for instance, to fix bugs in the proprietary product they have been given.

It depends on whether you want closed-source tools making use of your code or not.

That's why I am with , I don't see a good reason to avoid the use of programs under the GPL, whatever version it is, unless your "program" consists of the same functionality. There is plenty of ways to interface a GPL-licensed program with a proprietary one. And I think andrebrait has a point there.

That, and I am afraid that the Halloween documents' mindset is still present in a lot of companies. "Free software is basically communism", "Linux is cancer". Let's take an analogy here: your family probably doesn't rely on capitalism to feed its members, and it extends to encompass newcomers; both of with aren't necessary a bad thing, but rather necessary for long-term survival. Let's call "communism" a good thing in this example.

I wish more companies would see the value in free software, and contribute more things back (with a preference for GPLv3).

Repost: Fail with the quotes. Michael, could you allow users to delete their posts, maybe before a short delay? I'm planning to get phoronix premium anyway, but never got around to do it.

[jabl]

The GPLv3 is seen as corporate unfriendly and was greatly the reason for starting LLVM on more "neutral" grounds.

Not really. LLVM was started to support Chris Lattners Phd research, and AFAICT he just chose the default UIUC license without any huge chip on his shoulder wrt. the eternal BSD vs. GPL flamewar. Only much later did Apple hire him, and a bunch of people to implement the clang frontend etc. so that it could "compete" against GCC.

[uid313]

The current license is an odd license not shared by many other open source projects, hence it would be desirable with a more common license.
So switching license may be a good idea.
The Apache License is a good license, however it is vastly different and more complicated than the current license.
I think instead of the Apache License, they should go for a more similar and minimalist license such as 2-clause BSD or the ISC license.