[antlr-interest] licensing stuff

[Chris Poirier]

Hi Terence,

> There have been a HUGE number of incoming patches over 15 years and
> it's too late to get formal emails from all of them.  Some are surely
> retired persons and off email like Knuth ;)  Programmers understand
> what public domain means and they don't expect any compensation for
> patches.

First up, I'm not trying to make your life difficult.  Really.  I
/greatly/ appreciate being able to use good software that I didn't have
to write, and ANTLR is making things possible for me that I probably
wouldn't have even tried without it.  /Thank you/.

Maybe I'm being presumptuous trying to find a solution to this problem,
being new here and all, but, at the very least, I need to know my
risks....  Fortunately, I'm not a lawyer, and I am generally willing to
take people at their word.

You mentioned that there have been many contributors over the years.
It's probably safe to ignore the ones who contributed a small bug fix or
whatever.  Of the ones who contributed significant amounts of code
(classes, performance enhancements, features, etc.), how confident are
you that every one of them knew and agreed with what was to be done with
their contributions (ie. placed in the public domain)?

I doubt it will assuage the fears of IBM's lawyers, or anything, but if
the list of contributors is long, and some may not have consented, what
about broadcasting a message where it is likely to be seen by most
asking anyone who contributed code without intending it to be placed in
the public domain to speak up now or "forever hold their peace."


> Do we need to modify it to say "any contributions acquire
> automatically the BSD license?"  Probably not since some lawyer will
> simply argue that that is not legal or some crap.

You can't do it retroactively, but you could certainly start doing it
today, for all future contributions.  Getting ownership is the best
thing, because then you have full control over what to do with the code.


> I've been wondering how to build a formal contributors list for 3.0
> and perhaps we can add wording explicitly transferring ownership to me
> so that I can say I don't own it.  Bizarre.  After these sorts of
> discussions, it makes me want to do every line of code myself for 3.0.

:-)  Yeah, I know the feeling.  But the law isn't all bad, and it's
meant primarily as a shield, not a sword.  Public domain is great (and
/very/ generous, as I mentioned), but the BSD and Academic Free licenses
are pretty much as good as, and provide /you/ and your work with
protection, too.


> A final note: people, please check the "license" on software before you
> use it.  I had to carefully read licenses for using Lucene, Resin,
> etc... when building jGuru.  Do it *before*, not *after*.

Indeed.  Especially licenses for Windows software.  Some of the clauses
creeping into the ninth or tenth page of those are pretty invasive....


> Thanks for your time and thanks for using ANTLR even though we're all
> going to be sued :(

As another poster mentioned, it's not likely.  I would just really like
to quantify that risk before trying to decide if it is acceptable.


Thanks,
   Chris.



 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/antlr-interest/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     antlr-interest-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/