[antlr-interest] The matter of licensing...

[Addi Jamshidi]

Hi Chris:

> Perhaps your lawyers are concerned that not all contributors have stated
> that their contributions are also placed in the public domain?

Yes, this is the exact that concern and the argument that our lawyers are using and in their eyes this is what makes ANTLR NOT a genuine open source product. And this is truly sad in the eyes of us developers.
 
Regards,
 
Addi   
 

Chris Poirier <cpoirier at dreaming.org> wrote:
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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