Andrei's Google Talk

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:46:19 -0400, Bruno Medeiros  
<brunodomedeiros+spam at com.gmail> wrote:

> On 20/09/2010 16:13, klickverbot wrote:
>> On 9/20/10 5:10 PM, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>>> I find myself wishing some more OSS projects had commercial-friendly
>>> licenses. :-/ In particular LLVM, as I do agree it might have been  
>>> great
>>> if Walter were able to work with it without these IP worries.
>>
>> You want something even more liberal than BSD?
>
> Oh, from this discussion, I thought LLVM was GPL or LGPL, but not BSD  
> (or more concretely, a variant of BSD from what I see).
>
> What is the issue then of Walter taking a look at the LLVM code? It does  
> not seem to be the case that LLVM would send lawyers to anyone.

BSD includes a binary attribution clause (not sure about LLVM), which  
makes it undesirable license for commercial use.

The issue is taint.  I find this aspect of copyright and licensing highly  
dubious (I can barely remember what I did last week, not to mention some  
souce code I read last year), but the issue is this:  Let's say Walter  
does read LLVM source code, and then works on another compiler project for  
another company that is completely proprietary.  LLVM has some possible  
connection to interject and say "you have to give LLVM developers credit,"  
even if Walter didn't copy any code.  Yeah, it's ridiculous and absurd,  
but possible.

Walter's position is, "If I don't look at any code, then I can't possibly  
be connected."  While extreme, there's no loopholes or legal arguments  
against it.  It's like an iron-clad alibi.

-Steve