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OpenBSD Founder Calling For LLVM To Face A Cataclysm Over Its Re-Licensing

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  • OpenBSD Founder Calling For LLVM To Face A Cataclysm Over Its Re-Licensing

    Phoronix: OpenBSD Founder Calling For LLVM To Face A Cataclysm Over Its Re-Licensing

    For over one year there's been talk of LLVM pursuing a mass relicensing from its University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License, which is similar to the three-clause BSD license, to the Apache 2.0 license with explicit mention of GPLv2 compatibility. As mentioned in that aforelinked article, this re-licensing is moving ahead. OpenBSD leader Theo de Raadt is predicting this could cause a major problem and is in fact hoping for it...

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  • #2
    This guy is acting worst than a GNU/GPL purist...

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    • #3
      Theo the rat crazy as usual...

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      • #4
        The LLVM project has been vibrant under it's current license... can the same be said of many apache projects and or apache licensed projected. I Don't know of any other than apache httpd itself which isn't what I'd call vibrant.

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        • #5
          Ease of relicensing into anything the fuck you want has always been the gift and curse of BSD licenses (e.g. assholes like Apple can steal all their code and close the source and prevent the original authors from getting any benefit, hell they can even claim it's all their own original code if they want!). It protects users but doesn't give a fuck about developers like GPL does, that's the major difference I guess.

          And this is exactly why nothing can be done about this (but this is a very good shift I think). Still I wonder why they'd be re-licensing now, this license has been working out fine for them so far right?

          Also what the hell happened to the edit feature? Why can't I edit my posts anymore?

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          • #6
            This is screwed up, now that everyone has worked together to create something let's make it proprietary friendly... so it can get used and abused like a BSD. Only corporate interests could be pushing for this.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by SaucyJack View Post
              This is screwed up, now that everyone has worked together to create something let's make it proprietary friendly... so it can get used and abused like a BSD. Only corporate interests could be pushing for this.
              It is already under a permissive license. They want to change it to a different permissive license.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by TheBlackCat View Post

                It is already under a permissive license. They want to change it to a different permissive license.
                So then what's the big change?

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by SaucyJack View Post

                  So then what's the big change?
                  The current license is similar to BSD licenses (but is not one of the "standard" BSD licenses most people use), and apparently one or more fans of the BSD license doesn't like the Apache 2.0 license for whatever reason.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by rabcor View Post
                    And this is exactly why nothing can be done about this (but this is a very good shift I think). Still I wonder why they'd be re-licensing now, this license has been working out fine for them so far right?
                    I suspect they want Apache for the same reason Google uses it: It's more or less "BSD with an explicit patent grant". (ie. If you contribute code to which you own the patents, you can't later sue people who use it)

                    The reason that explicit GPL 2.0 permission is necessary is because the GPL 2.0 is so old that it has no explicit patent grant and the Apache 2.0 patent grant violates its "no additional restrictions" clause.

                    They fixed that in the GPL 3.0 (It's got its own explicit patent grant as well as being Apache 2.0 compatible) but a lot of code was licensed "GPL 2" (no "or later") and there's a lot of GPL 3.0 FUD floating around... partly from companies that want to take advantage of what they consider to be loopholes in how the GPLv2 relies on the courts to define "derived work" while the GPL 3.0 flat-out says "any other code the GPLed code requires to run, except system libraries", making explicit the FSF's interpretation of "derived work".

                    The sad thing is, the GPL 3.0 actually improves a lot of stuff, such as providing a way for projects to specify a trusted party who will decide the "or any later version" question once that version is actually out, modernizing the rules for what counts as "good enough" when ensuring access to source code and allowing your license-given rights to be reinstated automatically should you come into compliance within 30 days. (Under the GPL2, it doesn't matter if you come into compliance after a violation. The actual reason people who come into compliance are allowed to continue using GPLed code is because they've been implicitly re-granted permission by the copyright holder.)

                    Originally posted by rabcor View Post
                    Also what the hell happened to the edit feature? Why can't I edit my posts anymore?
                    The anti-spam features don't get applied when editing and spammers were exploiting that, so Michael had to restrict editing to paying subscribers until he has time to find a solution.

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