[llvm-dev] RFC: Improving license & patent issues in the LLVM community

[Daniel Berlin via llvm-dev]

>> I think a combination of good faith and providing appropiate tools is enough.
>
> I am personally a huge believer in good faith and good intentions, and that approach has served LLVM well for many years.  However, it is undeniably true that motives can be mixed, and particularly as the LLVM community grows over the years that we cannot rely on it forever.

I have to give a huge +1 here.

Having cleaned and dealt with fires due to  a *number* of these
situations before, and had to help projects that thought good
intentions were enough, the blunt truth is:
It's not.  Really
You are just getting lucky.
I wish it were not the case, but good intentions are worth precisely
squat when things go bad.
Whether things go bad is not related at all to your community, how
good the people are in it, the size of your project, or anything else.

I've seen projects large and small have issues here.
For example, the Java Model Railroad interface (See, e.g.,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer) was not exactly "a
huge community".