[M3devel] A question about the M3 licensing...

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 02:17:46PM -0500, Rodney M. Bates wrote:
> Olaf Wagner wrote:
> >Quoting hendrik at topoi.pooq.com:
> >
> >>I suppose there's another possibility -- writing a new M3 front end with
> >>a different licence, and being free of SRC forever.  Except that if
> >>some of our libraries are compiled from SRC source code, will we have to
> >>compile at installation tiem to avould distributing mixed GNU/SRC
> >>binaries?
> >
> >I don't think this is correct. The SRC license allows much more than
> >the GNU FSF license. That was exactly the stumbling block when it came
> >to integrating the M3 extensions to gcc into the gcc distribution.
> >The FSF didn't like the way the backend was used in a different process
> >context in order to avoid infecting all compiler code with the FSF
> >license.
> >
> >Of course you can write another compiler front-end under the FSF
> >license. I'd assume this will take several man-years though until
> >you reach the quality of the current system. And any commercial use
> >will then be much more difficult, but this is probably moot
> >regarding the current widespread user base :-)
> 
> This could be very hard to pull off, or maybe not so hard, but I think
> the best result would be if HP, as SRC's successor, could be persuaded
> to assign copyright ownership to FSF, or maybe even some other
> entity, such as a nonprofit foundation or something.   I can't think how
> keeping it themselves would have any business value to HP, and
> anything to get it more widely used might have positive value to them.
> 
> Of course, it would be complicated by the fact that there are some
> files around with a half-dozen or so other copyright owners and
> licenses. 

But liberating the SRC stuff would handle most of it.  And I're 
recommend a licence that is strictly more liberal than FSF's.  Perhaps 
something like the MIT license, or BSD.  They're compatible with GPL, 
and we may end up having fewer problems in the far future.  We might 
someday, for example, have users needing to link proprietary code with 
parts of the compiler, and it would be good for that to be possible.

- hendrik