Andrei's Google Talk

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:29:13 -0400, retard <re at tard.com.invalid> wrote:

> Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:14:09 -0400, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> So the another company goes bankrupt if Walter has to mention the name
> 'LLVM developers' in the documentation nobody reads and in an About
> dialog nobody ever reads?

No, but it's a negative thing to require attribution in the standard  
library.  The compiler is probably fine, but Walter's *business* is  
writing compilers.  He avoids reading other compiler's code because he  
does not want to have that compiler come after him even when he didn't  
copy the code.

> I understand this when the other project (LLVM
> in this case) has some viral license like GPL, but in this case they only
> expect moral attribution. Your ideology is sick: "we must steal as much
> as possible from the open source dickheads without giving attribution,
> and turn the code into proprietary DRM shit to enslave the world  
> muhahaha"

People seem to think that an accusation is proof.  If someone says you  
stole their code, because you read it, it's not always true.  It's just  
much easier to prove you didn't steal it if you didn't read it.

Note that we are not talking about actual copying that is the problem.  If  
there wasn't the side effect of people believing that your mind is tainted  
with their code and any other code you write must be a derivative work,  
I'm sure Walter would have no problem copying LLVM and giving attribution.

-Steve