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It's not obvious to me what patent issues would require CLAs to avoid - if inbound=outbound licensing is insufficient, isn't the problem just that you're using
by the_why_of_y 10y ago
It's not obvious to me what patent issues would require CLAs to avoid - if inbound=outbound licensing is insufficient, isn't the problem just that you're using the wrong license?
- DannyBee 10y agoThere is no right license for things like, say, compilers and runtime libraries, that is compatible and usable with the licenses of all the things that want to use them, and also provides the kind of patent protection and wording necessary to have this kind of happiness. Basically, Apache2 would be the right license if it was GPLv2 compatible and had no attribution clause. Making it GPLv2 compatible, however, requires removing exactly the set of patent clauses you want to use to protect downstream users.
- the_why_of_y 10y agoOk, GPLv2 is a problem, that's understandable. An alternative could be some sort of mandatory dual-licensing scheme but that would be a bit ugly and confusing and perhaps worse than CLAs in practice.