LLVM Developers Are Still Working On Their Massive Relicensing Effort

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LLVM Developers Are Still Working On Their Massive Relicensing Effort

It's been over three years since the original proposal for re-licensing the LLVM compiler infrastructure and while they have reached community consensus on their new "Apache 2.0 with LLVM Exception" license, there's still a big task at hand of getting all past contributors signing off on the process...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LLVM-Relicensing-EOY2018-Status

[Guest]

I'm confused - programs created by compilers never had licenses imposed on them by the compiler......AFAIK.

[ssokolow]

I'm confused - programs created by compilers never had licenses imoosdd on them by the compiler......AFAIK.

Compilers typically include support libraries that they link into the binaries they produce. (eg. the C runtime which is responsible for preparing argc and argv (from whatever convention the host platform uses for passing arguments) and then calling main.)

[uxmkt]

Compilers typically include support libraries that they link into the binaries they produce. (eg. the C runtime which is responsible for preparing argc...

You're not incorrect per se. A much more striking illustration however is: Take code generators like bison and flex for example. *Not only* do they link in support libraries/objects, but your program is also *designed specifically* for the generator (or generator family). While `int main(){printf("Hello world\n");}` will pretty much work with any C library (turboc, msvcrt, glibc, musl, you name it), something like

hexdigit [0-9a-fA-f]
%%
"==" { return EQ; }
%%
static void somefunc(void) {
    YY_BUFFER_STATE b = yy_create_buffer(...);
}

has a strong tie on bison/yacc - you could not feed it to another generator like ragel - so strong that it may be considered a derivative.

[bridgman]

Most compilers and code generators have explicit text in their licenses that exempts compiled/generated programs from the license of the tool itself.

https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditions.html

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1.en.html