|
|
|
|
|
|
by jcranmer
3564 days ago
|
|
|
The current license is effectively the MIT license, which lets downstream developers repackage the code for development works to do what they want, with the most important boilerplate being the part that says "we're not legally liable if this software causes problems." The biggest flaw of MIT-like licenses is their silence on patent issues, compilers unfortunately being one of the cases where patents are indeed an issue (SEH and Steensgards being two major things well-known as being under patent). Legal opinions differ on what the effect is, and some companies with more aggressive legal departments are twitchy about the matter. The Apache license covers patents in a satisfactory way while still retaining the permissibility of the MIT license. However, Apache and GPL aren't necessarily compatible with each other--Apache v2 and GPLv3 work around it by adding explicit compatibility clauses. The Apache v2/GPLv2 compatibility story is something that legal opinions differ on [1]. The exceptions being proposed are designed to explicitly guarantee compatibility between the two licenses. [1] The consensus seems to be that it would just work. However, it is worth keeping in mind that Apple is a prominent contributor to LLVM, and Apple does seem to generally take a more pessimistic legal approach, as well as being very well-known for their abhorrence of GPLv3 code. |
|
|
What's that?