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

[Joerg Sonnenberger via llvm-dev]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 07:52:45AM -0700, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 5:16 AM, Joerg Sonnenberger via llvm-dev
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 09:54:30PM -0700, Chris Lattner wrote:
> >> On Oct 19, 2015, at 10:53 AM, Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg at britannica.bec.de> wrote:
> >> >>>> 2) We could require new contributors to sign the Apache CLA.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> To me, this is the most acceptable option of the listed terms.
> >> >>
> >> >> Please explain: why?
> >> >
> >> > First part for me is that switching the code to a different license
> >> > doesn't address some of the legal concerns regarding "tainted" code.
> >>
> >> I’m not sure what you mean by that.
> >
> > Clearly :)
> >
> >> Because LLVM uses a distributed approach to copyright (i.e., all
> >> contributors, or their employer, own the copyright for their work),
> >> you must contact each of them to relicense the code under a new license.
> >> As part of this contact, you get them to agree to relicense under the
> >> new license.  If they don’t, you aren’t allowed to retain the code.
> >>
> >> This seems clean to me, even if it is a huge amount of work, and even
> >> if it means that you may not get to keep 100% of the code in the tree.
> >
> > I am not talking about the process for relicensing code. Let's assume
> > that part happened. The point I am trying to make is that this doesn't
> > solve any of the reasons why a CLA is normally introduced
> 
> So let me stop you right here.
> Because this statement is just flat out wrong.
> Let's go through your issues:
> 
> > and I do
> > believe many of those are used as justification for such a license
> > change in first place:
> >
> > (1) Clear responsibility for authorship of committed changes.
> > (2) Explicit contract for patent licenses.
> 
> Again, as stated before, both of these issues are covered by the apache license.
> 
> It has a built-in CLA that explicitly grants both copyright and patent
> rights from contributors when they make contributions to the work.

Huh? How can employee X of company Y contributing a patch grant any
patent rights on behalf of Y?

Joerg