[antlr-interest] ANTLR 3 License

[Braden McDaniel]

Quoting Matt Benson <gudnabrsam at yahoo.com>:

> Wow.  That was rough.  Personally, I'm not the least
> bit ashamed to admit having difficulty in
> understanding the dizzying wording of the various
> open-source licenses.

That reflects the unfortunate fact that, "I'm a techie; I shouldn't be 
expected to understand a legal document," has become an accepted means of 
evading the chore of dealing with and understanding the issues of policy that 
are an inevitable consequence of writing code. In general, such documents are 
written to be understandable and unambiguous--with the unfortunate side effect 
of making them verbose and tedious to read.

As a matter of fact, there are plenty of software engineers working at 
software companies who routinely and confidently use and depend on LGPL 
software. Assertions to the contrary exhibit ignorance.

I am not trying to promote the LGPL for use with a future version of ANTLR. In 
fact, as long as my ability to continue to use ANTLR output with my LGPL 
software is not threatened--and I do not anticipate that it will be--I have no 
opinion on the matter. However, just about every message posted decrying the 
potential application of the LGPL to ANTLR has included varying amounts of 
inaccuracy, much of which has obviously been FUD repeated n-hand. As someone 
who develops LGPL software, I may be inclined to respond harshly to gross 
inaccuracies resulting from what I perceive as in-your-face intellectual 
laziness.

-- 
Braden McDaniel                           e-mail: <braden at endoframe.com>
<http://endoframe.com>                    Jabber: <braden at jabber.org>

 

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