[M3devel] parse.c licensing question, dual?

[Jay K]

I'm going to read Olaf's assertion as 1 "go from GPL to LGPL", not 2 "go from DEC to LGPL".


Imho we should use the OpenBSD or FreeBSD or NetBSD licenses.


The OpenBSD folks are..funny but right-seeming.
Their take for example on the Apache 2.0 license is -- why another long license? They'd need to pay a lawyer to allow for it. So just don't allow for it. They have stayed back with Apache 1.x for this reason.


So you should reuse an existing short license.


So, sorry, another question I forgot to ask -- who owns parse.c?
Can we relicense it?


And, ok, I own m3-def.h. I can just paste two license into it?
I'll research the old Qt story here I guess or otherwise research.

There is also a claim that the FreeBSD license is GPL-compatible, which implies we can use it on parse.c/m3-def.h -- just a single license. That is clearer to me. I just understand what it means to have two licences, unless, e.g. the license is context-dependent -- different people get different license depending on situation, like if they paid, or if they are getting paid.


I think I was going to use m3-def.h/parse.c in the C backend, writing it in C or C++, and the intervening layer that allows easily writing multiple passes over the IR. The result instead was incredibly tedious and makes changing the IR more difficult/tedious.
If I embark on an LLVM backend, I'll again be tempted to do that.


It would be nice if we could relicense all the DEC SRC stuff as slightly more liberal BSD.
I see DEC SRC seems to have an optional give back clause -- if you give your changes back to DEC, then you also license it to them liberally. But give back doesn't seem mandatory.

 4. Improvements.  LICENSEE hereby grants to DIGITAL a non-exclusive,
    non-transferable, royalty free right to use, modify, reproduce
    and distribute with the right to sublicense at any tier, any
    improvements, enhancements, extensions, or modifications that
    LICENSEE make to SOFTWARE, provided such are returned to DIGITAL
    by LICENSEE.


 - Jay


From: hosking at purdue.edu
To: wagner at elegosoft.com
CC: jay.krell at cornell.edu; m3devel at elegosoft.com
Subject: Re: [M3devel] parse.c licensing question, dual?
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 06:55:17 +0000






Please be careful here.
Going from the current license to LGPL is probably not the best route for CM3!






On 27 Jun 2016, at 4:53 PM, Olaf Wagner <wagner at elegosoft.com> wrote:

On
 Mon, 27 Jun 2016 06:39:12 +0000
Jay
 K <jay.krell at cornell.edu>
 wrote:


- I basically understand licensing.

- I understand GPL

- I understand more liberal BSD license

- I understand that the notion of "linking" hasn't been defined, but everyone seems to define it "like how static libraries work", "maybe with dynamic linking", and definitely not with "process boundaries".

- So cm3 calls gcc across a process boundary, and parse.c is GPL licensed, linked to other GPL licensed code, and does not "link" to cm3, so does not infect the cm3 runtime, so does not infect all the Modula-3 code.





What I do not understand:

- dual licensing

- who owns parse.c

- can parse.c be dual licensed?



In particular:

jair:mips jay$ edit /dev2/cm3.4/m3-sys/m3cc/gcc/gcc/m3cg/

   m3-parse.h           parse.c         

m3-def.h        m3cg.h              





Some of these files would be useful in other backends, structured like the cm3cg backend at least, and possibly

in-process ones, either call-based or "linearized IR in memory".



In particular m3-def.h and m3cg.h. I would like to maybe reuse these in non-GPL code.



m3cg.h is output by m3cggen.

m3-def.h I wrote.



These files need to be at least be GPL licensed since they are used by parse.c and linked to the overall gcc backend.

Can we also BSD license them or such?



(and broken record, but m3-def.h...we could really use some sort of preprocessor for Modula-3, maybe...this form of C/C++ is super useful...)



My
 understand is that you can put any license on things you wrote yourself.
I'm
 not really sure, but I doubt that there is any legal entity left that
cares
 for the M3 sources from DEC SRC (if it is that old). So I _think_
that
 we (you) might change the copyright for those.

To
 be more compatible with the GNU stuff, it might be better to use
LGPL
 together with the gcc backend.

I
 am not a lawyer though.

Olaf
-- 
Olaf
 Wagner -- elego Software Solutions GmbH -- http://www.elegosoft.com 
              Gustav-Meyer-Allee
 25 / Gebäude 12, 13355 Berlin, Germany
phone:
 +49 30 23 45 86 96  mobile: +49 177 2345 869  fax: +49 30 23 45 86 95
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 Olaf Wagner | Sitz: Berlin
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