[LLVMdev] [llvm-c] Copyright notice in language bindings

[Chris Lattner]

On Mar 13, 2013, at 6:40 AM, Moritz Maxeiner <moritzmaxeiner at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> If I write LLVM bindings for a language X, in which I obviously
> need to at least use parts of the llvm-c headers (constants, enums, typedefs, function names and
> signatures) do I need to include the LLVM copyright notice?
> 
> Whereas llvm-c has multiple headers (e.g. Analysis.h, BitReader.h, Core.h, etc.) my bindings
> only have three files constants.d, types.d and functions.d which respectively contain all
> of the previously mentioned parts.
> This means I can't just copy-paste the copyright notice from the llvm-c headers
> and add LLVM's license.txt as these header license notices contain the headers' filenames
> (which do not translate to my bindings).
> So the most sensible thing would be to put the complete LLVM license at the top of
> those three files - if that is necessary; I'm not sure if it is, though, because since I'm not
> copy-pasting the code but adapting it to another language it may not strictly count as redistributing
> -  especially since I don't copy any of LLVM's algorithms, but *only* the C API itself.
> 
> Any help regarding this would be appreciated, because I have finished writing
> the bindings but do not risk publishing them without a correct copyright notice if it is
> needed.

Hi Moritz,

LLVM's license includes a binary redistribution clause:
http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#license

Including a note in the documentation that ships with your product (or something similar) is enough, but you do need to acknowledge that you use llvm.

-Chris