[M3devel] parse.c licensing question, dual?

[Jay K]

Can the owner relicense parse.c, or it is stuck with GPL because it links to gcc?

And then -- who owns it? Digital and Critical Mass?

 - Jay



________________________________
> From: hosking at purdue.edu 
> To: jay.krell at cornell.edu 
> CC: wagner at elegosoft.com; m3devel at elegosoft.com 
> Subject: Re: [M3devel] parse.c licensing question, dual? 
> Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 09:51:31 +0000 
> 
> parse.c is contaminated by GPL. 
> 
> On 27 Jun 2016, at 6:16 PM, Jay K 
> <jay.krell at cornell.edu<mailto:jay.krell at cornell.edu>> wrote: 
> 
> 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<mailto:hosking at purdue.edu> 
> To: wagner at elegosoft.com<mailto:wagner at elegosoft.com> 
> CC: jay.krell at cornell.edu<mailto:jay.krell at cornell.edu>; 
> m3devel at elegosoft.com<mailto: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<mailto:wagner at elegosoft.com>> wrote: 
> 
> On Mon, 27 Jun 2016 06:39:12 +0000 
> Jay K <jay.krell at cornell.edu<mailto: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<http://www.elegosoft.com/> 
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