[antlr-interest] licensing stuff

[Tom Zagotta]

One the one hand, Terence wants to give everything away, to get the greatest
overall benefit to "society," and doesn't really want to spend a lot of his
valuable time on the the legal side.  That makes sense.

On the other side, companies want to be able to use ANTLR in their products,
and don't want to risk legal exposure.  But I think that most companies who
think about it a little will figure out that using ANTLR could add some
significant risk.  Therefore, they may be inclined to reinvent the wheel,
rather than using ANTLR.  This is contrary to Terence's goals, I think.

I am a programmer.  When I have programming issues, I handle them myself.
When I have legal issues, I talk with (and pay) my lawyer.

I guess what I would suggest is that for one of the new releases of ANTLR,
either V2.8 or V3.0, that "we" (the ANTLR community) hire a lawyer to figure
out the best approach to licensing.

I am sure the outcome of talking with an attorney will be something along
the lines of "well, you can't avoid risk completely, but if you do these (n)
things, you can minimize the risk..."  This is consistent with Terence's
statement that you can't really solve the problem.  But my point is, that
you can, with a relatively small investment, evalute and minimize the risk.
I think we owe it to all the current and future users of ANTLR to do our
best to solve this here and now, rather than ignoring it or pretending it
doesn't exist.

So my question to the group is, do many others think this issue is
significant enough to do this, and if so, do you feel it is important enough
to put in "real money" to get professional help with the licensing
agreement?

Best regards,

- Tom

...using ANTLR in a couple of projects, and slightly concerned about the
legal implications for our company and our customers.



 
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