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

[David Chisnall via llvm-dev]

On 20 Oct 2015, at 17:46, Daniel Berlin via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> You could ship the non-combined program.
> IE  You can ship an llvm jit and a gpl2 program, and jit the program
> on the user's machine.

NeXT believed that shipping the GPL-incompatible bit as a shared library that was linked on the end user’s system was enough.  The FSF’s lawyers convinced them otherwise (which is how some truly horrible code ended up in GCC, but I digress).  This is reason that most Linux distributions don’t ship nVidia binary drivers on the install CD, and instead ship a shim that permits the user to download the drivers, whereas PC-BSD can happily include the drivers on the install media.

David