Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:

 > > However, this situation is easily enough changed.  The useful programs
 > > from the LLVM project can be forked (AFAIK their license is not
 > > perversely incompatible with the GPL) as GNU projects under the "GPL
 > > v3 or later" permission schema.
 > >
 > > Would you object to that?
 > 
 > I'd object, for basically practical reasons.  You can fork code, but you
 > cannot fork a community.

True.

 > A fork of the LLVM codebase under the GPLv3 makes only sense if you
 > actually add nontrivial nonseparable components under the GPLv3 or
 > the code base can be just swapped out.

Not at all.  This could merely be a distribution fork, like the
Ghostscript dual license scheme, or the various foobar+gnureadline
distributions of individual programs that appeared over the years, or
like some of the various commercial versions of BSD and X11 and TeX
that have appeared over the years.

And of course the code base can just be swapped out.  The point is
simply to make the public point that *this* distribution is copyleft,
and *that one* isn't.  "Defend" their free software for them, as it
were.

I expect Richard to object too (on the grounds that it's still
providing succor to the "enemy" by validating their code, and
"undermining" GCC because GCC's feature support is either less, or a
patch, or nonexistent depending on who you listen to), but I don't
think "redistributing code under a different license" means you have
to "add nontrivial nonseparable components."

 > Now if the upstream is a weak license like X11, at some point of time

It has to be, otherwise sublicensing can't happen.

 > the developers might say "that fork is annoying, let's relicense
 > what we have now under BSD with advertising clause and cut off
 > those others".

Implausible.  Yes, SSLeay.  That example is over a decade old and was
pretty idiosyncratic and poorly-received even then.

OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice ... doesn't that undermine your point?
Apache 2.0 is compatible with GNU GPL 3.0.  I would suppose it's
compatible with LGPL 3.0, since LGPL 3 is GPL 3.  Sure, I suppose the
folks at Apache would be a little miffed at the one-way flow of code,
but they did it to themselves (at fairly high cost of redundant
development, too).  AFAIK there was never any intent by Apache legal
to be GPL incompatible, it was just that they took the step of adding
a patent "poison pill" before the GPL did that made their licenses
GPLv2-incompatible.

 > They'll likely retain the majority of their development community but
 > hang out the fork under GPLv3 to dry.

I really don't see why LLVM would care enough to pervert their
license, any more than Apache does.