[llvm-dev] RFC #2: Improving license & patent issues in the LLVM community

[David Chisnall via llvm-dev]

On 3 Nov 2016, at 15:28, Daniel Berlin <dberlin at dberlin.org> wrote:
> 
>  If not, what prevents this?
> 
> Because the patent grant is based on the state of the software as of the time of your contribution.
> It's even covered in the Apache license FAQ:
> "Q1: If I own a patent and contribute to a Work, and, at the time my contribution is included in that Work, none of my patent's claims are subject to Apache's Grant of Patent License, is there a way any of those claims would later become subject to the Grant of Patent License solely due to subsequent contributions by other parties who are not licensees of that patent.
> A1:
> No.”

Thanks, that makes sense.  I had assumed the termination was closer to GPLv3.

> For clarification: Is my interpretation incorrect?  If I compile code with GCC, which uses templates from libc++ headers and therefore results in libc++ code being inserted into the resulting binary, am I required to abide by clause 4 of the Apache license and include the libc++ attribution?
> 
> Yes.
> But, AFAIK, this is deliberate.  IE the view is that in this case, you *should* be giving attribution.
> So this is at least "not a bug", regardless of whether it's liked or not.

I believe that this would be a show-stopper for FreeBSD’s use of libc++ and compiler-rt.  As such, I would strongly oppose this and would not consent to any of my code in libc++ being relicensed under the proposed terms.  This would require that we audit all 30K packages, find the ones that will (when we ship binaries) link libc++, and add the attribution in the right places.

Whose view is ’the view'?  I and the other libc++ contributors were all happy to have our code relicensed under the MIT license (or contribute it under those terms originally), so there is some pretty clear evidence that we explicitly did *not* require this attribution.  Indeed, we relicensed under the MIT license (after long discussion) specifically to avoid this requirement.  This seems like a step that is directly contrary to the intentions of the original authors.

David