[antlr-interest] The matter of licensing...
Chris Poirier
cpoirier at dreaming.org
Thu Feb 5 00:29:51 PST 2004
Hi Addi,
> The issue is rather simple in terms of legalities but complex in the
> eyes of us as developers! Basically the issue is that ANTLR licensing
> does not explicitly state that those who have contributed (or will
> contribute) to ANTLR can not claim anything financially or otherwise
> in any form or shape now or anytime in the future (i.e. standard open
> source licensing). The legal thinking is that anyone who has
> contributed to ANTLR can in effect claim monetary rewards from any
> company that uses the ANTLR parser (and its runtime library) in its
> product(s). Understandably comapnies (especially large corporations)
> can not (and in fact will not) be able to use the product for their
> own protections.
I just had a look at the license, and it places ANTLR in the public
domain. Public domain means /you/ own the code as much as does anyone
else -- we own it collectively as a human race. One cannot claim any
rights over things placed in the public domain. That is the nature of
public domain -- all proprietary rights are revoked.
Perhaps your lawyers are concerned that not all contributors have stated
that their contributions are also placed in the public domain? This
might be a legitimate concern, I don't know. But barring someone
claiming their code made it into the product 'by accident', public
domain is about as good a deal as you can get. And a very generous
action by the authors.
Later,
Chris.
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