[antlr-interest] Re: stuff I don't like about ANTLR 2.x

Wed Mar 10 03:21:17 PST 2004

What do you mean by "restrictive"? There are at least three groups of
people you need to consider, and you need to ask "which licence
restricts which group, and how?". The three groups of people are the
software writers, software distributors, and software users. The GPL is
very *user* friendly, closed source is *writer/distributor* friendly,
and other licences fall between the two. The BSD is pretty much the MOST
restrictive licence out there, if you view it from the writer's
viewpoint :-)

I think licences can be split into four groups, really.

1. The "don't sue me, but do as you like" group.

BSD, artistic, etc. Basically, they waive copyright restrictions, and
say to the user "you're on your own". Actually, Ter, I'd seriously look
at the Artistic licence. It's just as free with the *CODE* as the BSD,
but it's basically got a "don't piss me off or I'll take the *NAME*
away" clause. After all, you wouldn't be pleased if I took ANTLR,
modified it, sold it under the ANTLR name, and ruined your reputation.
Would you? For those customers who just want the code, there's no
difference between BSD and artistic. But for those people who rely on
the ANTLR name and trust your integrity, the artistic licence is much
better.

For example, when Artistic State released "Perl for Windows", everybody
just *knew* that MS had not pulled their "extend, ..." tricks because
the product was called Perl. Piss of Larry, and while the artistic
licence would not let him object to the *product*, he could make them
pull every reference to Perl from their literature...

2. The "I don't want your original code, but if you improve mine I want
it back" group.

As embodied in the *L*GPL - you have to keep my code separate from your
private code, but provided you keep your code separate with a clear
line, and make my code available, what you do to your code is your
business.

Basically, it prevents you taking my code proprietary and secret.

I'd be a lot happier if this was ANTLR's licence. A bit more hassle for
companies, and I suspect a lot of lawyers might need a visit with a
clue-by-four, but it really is a good, commercially friendly, licence.

3. The "I gave my code freely to you, you have to give yours back to me"
group.

The GPL! Actually, done properly, this is the most commercially friendly
open licence of all! Just ask MySQL, TrollTech, and probably a fair few
other companies. However, it's almost impossible to achieve "commercial
friendliness" unless this was planned from the beginning, so it's
invariably used by companies converting from closed source, and very few
others, if this is the aim. No use whatever to ANTLR.

4. Closed source.

As embodied in all sorts of EULAs, some nice, some horrible. Need I say
more?

Cheers,
Wol

-----Original Message-----
From: Terence Parr [mailto:parrt at cs.usfca.edu] 
Sent: 09 March 2004 18:01
To: antlr-interest at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [antlr-interest] Re: stuff I don't like about ANTLR 2.x

Howdy.  Yeah, I'm still thinking that BSD is the least restrictive and  
yet makes some lawyers feel better.

Thanks,
Ter

On Mar 9, 2004, at 3:49 AM, Anthony Youngman wrote:

> Two comments about licencing ...
>
> Why not look at one of the biggest Open Source projects out there?
> namely linux <vbg/>
>
> And what's wrong with the *L*GPL? I can't tell Ter what to do with his
> stuff, but as a small-time programmer, it would be my licence of  
> choice.
> And I don't see why my employers can't take advantage of it if they
> wish.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cj_daly [mailto:cj_daly at yahoo.com]
> Sent: 08 March 2004 20:52
> To: antlr-interest at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [antlr-interest] Re: stuff I don't like about ANTLR 2.x
>
> Here are a few:
>
> 0) (I thought of this last but I'm adding it at the beginning because
> it's so important to me!).  Those of us wanting to use Antlr within a
> corporate environment have to do something to make the laywers happy.
>  I think the singlemost important thing you can do here is to have a
> mechanism for registering contributers.  Each contributer should be
> reachable (email is fine but the more contact info you have the
> better) and should have made some kind of affirmation that they agree
> with the license (this affirmation could be an email that you print
> and save, but a signed form faxed or snail-mailed would be even  
> better).
>
> I suggest looking at some of the bigger open source projects like
> Mozilla or Eclipse or Apache to see what mechanisms and forms they
use.
>
> Laywers would be even happier if the contributers all assign their
> copyrights to one person (i.e. Terence) or entity (like U of S.F.) but
> I don't think this is necessary as long as all of the contributers are
> contactable (and there aren't so many that it becomes extremely
> difficult to contact them all).
>
> Beyond that, you mentioned before that you are considering BSD as the
> license.  That would work for me.  GPL or LGPL would totally disallow
> me from using Antlr.  CPL (the license Eclipse uses) would be ideal
> for me but BSD is very doable.
>
>
>
>
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