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

[Chris Lattner]

On Mar 13, 2013, at 12:17 PM, Moritz Maxeiner <moritzmaxeiner at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 03/13/2013 07:26 PM, Chris Lattner wrote:
>> LLVM's license includes a binary redistribution clause:
>> http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#license
> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> the problem with the binary redistribution clause is that the bindings will not be linked with any part of LLVM.
> The bindings will load an LLVM shared library (dll/so/dylib) at runtime and thus an application compiled
> with said bindings will contain no binary of LLVM (as these will seperately resign in the shared library, which
> itself has to be distributed together with the license of course, but that is not of a concern to the bindings, as they will
> not provide this shared library) so as far as I can tell the clause would not apply.
> 
> Another point is that the binding themselves don't do anything other than interfacing with LLVM and are only
> provided in source code. The binary redistribution clause would only apply to people then in return using these
> bindings to access LLVM.

The license is very clear: obviously the dynamic library that is loaded would have to carry the notice somehow.

If you consider inclusion of symbol names into the application binary to be a "redistribution in binary form" of LLVM, then your application would need to carry the notice.  I would recommend either consulting with a lawyer to decide whether that is the case, or to just include it to be safe.

> Would something like this be appropriate then (README.md resides in the bindings' root folder),

Something like that is fine, but you need to include the copyright notice as stated in the license.  I'm not going to weigh in on whether (or not) the binary is being distributed in your case, check with a lawyer.

-Chris

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