
RFC: Improving license and patent issues in the LLVM community - protomyth
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2015-October/091536.html
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bloody_pretzels
The Apache license isn't compatible with GPLv2.

Isn't it possible to take a standard patent clause and add it to their
UIUC/MIT licenses? Google has done something similar with Go, using BSD +
their own patent grant.[1]

[1] [https://golang.org/PATENTS](https://golang.org/PATENTS)

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azakai
GPLv2 incompatibility does seem like a possible issue. Moving to Apache would
make it impossible to ever embed LLVM in the Linux kernel, for example. That
might seem unnecessary now, but perhaps someday there will be a use for a JIT
in the kernel, that we can't foresee.

The same problem might exist with other patent clauses, though - is the Go one
compatible with GPLv2?

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DannyBee
"Moving to Apache would make it impossible to ever embed LLVM in the Linux
kernel, for example"

Because the kernel is GPLv2 only, you also can't embed the GCC JIT, as it's
GPLv3.

So essentially, you are screwed along multiple axes

"but perhaps someday there will be a use for a JIT in the kernel, that we
can't foresee."

Maybe, but you can't solve every use case on one side.

(IE it may be that the kernel may have to have some licensing movement as
well)

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azakai
Yes, multiple axes, but this would be a regression for LLVM.

In any case, there are other compilers which would remain license compatible
with the GPL2, so should the kernel ever need one it could still have one, I
guess it just wouldn't be LLVM or GCC.

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DannyBee
"but this would be a regression for LLVM"

Surely, but as you can imagine, the LLVM community needs to figure out whether
this is a use case they care about (it was raised in that discussion, and i
think the consensus so far has been "not really")

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azakai
Yes, of course.

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DannyBee
Not sure why this got posted, but the gist of it is:

LLVM has reasonable reasons to want to move to either a CLA or straight Apache
license (which has a CLA built in).

Then the discussion bifurcates into both a ton of armchair lawyering, and an
IMHO reasonable discussion of the merits of each option.

~~~
protomyth
"Not sure why this got posted"

Just figured people might like to know a piece of software a lot of us use
might change its license. That change might have positive / negative effects
on current activities.

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kev009
I'd be pretty sad if they go the Apache route, permissive licensing is a
longer term benefit IMHO.

~~~
richardfontana
Usually when people speak of 'permissive' open source licenses they mean
noncopyleft ones including the Apache License 2.0. Do you define 'permissive'
as meaning 'textually simple noncopyleft licenses'? (I sometimes use 'simple
permissive' for this category.)

