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" It's no secret that a handful of corporations are pushing for this change" This is not actually true, and needs citation/data. This is actually the foundati

" It's no secret that a handful of corporations are pushing for this change" This is not actually true, and needs citation/data. This is actually the foundation trying to keep peace, and in a good way. "and not the best interest of the open source community" And this is an unsourced assumption of bad faith. It's also demonstrably false.

notaplumber 8y ago
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2015-October/091536.html http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2015-October/091536... It's stated as much in the initial proposal. "1) Some contributors are actively blocked from contributing code to LLVM." > These contributors have been holding back patches for quite some time that they’d like to upstream. Corporate contributors (in particular) often have patents on many different things, and while it is reasonable for them to grant access to patents related to LLVM, the wording in the Developer Policy can be interpreted to imply that unrelated parts of their IP could accidentally be granted to LLVM (through “scope creep”).
- DannyBee 8y ago
  This is not even remotely the same as "a handful of corporations" or "not in the best interest of the open source community". Also, you elided the other 2 large reasons given, which don't support your point at all. For example, GCC has an exception for its runtime libraries that it now applies universally for the exact same reasons - desire to share code, etc. It has that problem even reusing code from other GNU projects as well!
  - notaplumber 8y ago
    > This is a complicated topic that deals with legal issues and our primary goal is to unblock contributions from specific corporate contributors. You were saying?
    - chandlerc1024 8y ago
      The interesting thing is that the vast majority (and for the first year+ all) of the contributors to LLVM who donated massive amounts of time and resources to make the relicensing happen were not from any company that was blocked from contributing. I happen to know because I was one person who donated my time. I was not in any way blocked. We were trying to find a way to help more people (and yes, companies, because companies tend to pay people) contribute to LLVM because that is one of the things that makes the project stronger. So saying that the change was driven by these handful of contributors seems really off base. And in fact, my experience during the process was that the most motivated people were individual contributors, if anything pushing and pulling companies along (by finding good ways to address their potential concerns with any change like this). Anyways, that was my experience from being involved in the process. YMMV of course.
      - notaplumber 8y ago
        That doesn't change the reasons stated in the proposal email. Even if the final legwork was orchestrated by individual contributors, it's clear that the reasons were to appease corporations and not the community at large. It would be unlikely for any open source project to begin such a massive undertaking to re-license, from an already permissive license, without at least some corporate incentive/initiative to do so. No doubt lawyers were paid. I understand what you're saying, but it is also being disingenuous.
        DannyBee 8y ago
        "That doesn't change the reasons stated in the proposal email. Even if the final legwork was orchestrated by individual contributors, it's clear that the reasons were to appease corporations and not the community at large." Except it's not, since the community was the one who desired those contributions in the first place. Seriously. You are going off making a lot of assertions without knowledge, evidence, or data. Truthfully, if this is how the community you belong to operates, i'm somewhat glad they will no longer use LLVM.
        favorited 8y ago
tbrownaw 8y ago
And this is an unsourced assumption of bad faith. No, it's a reasonable interpretation of a definitive open-source project pushing back hard. It's also one portion of an example of people disagreeing about what's best for "the community", or in other words an example of where politics comes from. And you're showing another angle on that, which is people assuming the worst of eachother.

notaplumber 8y ago

http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2015-October/091536.html http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2015-October/091536... It's stated as much in the initial proposal. "1) Some contributors are actively blocked from contributing code to LLVM." > These contributors have been holding back patches for quite some time that they’d like to upstream. Corporate contributors (in particular) often have patents on many different things, and while it is reasonable for them to grant access to patents related to LLVM, the wording in the Developer Policy can be interpreted to imply that unrelated parts of their IP could accidentally be granted to LLVM (through “scope creep”).

DannyBee 8y ago
This is not even remotely the same as "a handful of corporations" or "not in the best interest of the open source community". Also, you elided the other 2 large reasons given, which don't support your point at all. For example, GCC has an exception for its runtime libraries that it now applies universally for the exact same reasons - desire to share code, etc. It has that problem even reusing code from other GNU projects as well!
- notaplumber 8y ago
  > This is a complicated topic that deals with legal issues and our primary goal is to unblock contributions from specific corporate contributors. You were saying?
  - chandlerc1024 8y ago
    The interesting thing is that the vast majority (and for the first year+ all) of the contributors to LLVM who donated massive amounts of time and resources to make the relicensing happen were not from any company that was blocked from contributing. I happen to know because I was one person who donated my time. I was not in any way blocked. We were trying to find a way to help more people (and yes, companies, because companies tend to pay people) contribute to LLVM because that is one of the things that makes the project stronger. So saying that the change was driven by these handful of contributors seems really off base. And in fact, my experience during the process was that the most motivated people were individual contributors, if anything pushing and pulling companies along (by finding good ways to address their potential concerns with any change like this). Anyways, that was my experience from being involved in the process. YMMV of course.
    - notaplumber 8y ago
      That doesn't change the reasons stated in the proposal email. Even if the final legwork was orchestrated by individual contributors, it's clear that the reasons were to appease corporations and not the community at large. It would be unlikely for any open source project to begin such a massive undertaking to re-license, from an already permissive license, without at least some corporate incentive/initiative to do so. No doubt lawyers were paid. I understand what you're saying, but it is also being disingenuous.
      - DannyBee 8y ago
        "That doesn't change the reasons stated in the proposal email. Even if the final legwork was orchestrated by individual contributors, it's clear that the reasons were to appease corporations and not the community at large." Except it's not, since the community was the one who desired those contributions in the first place. Seriously. You are going off making a lot of assertions without knowledge, evidence, or data. Truthfully, if this is how the community you belong to operates, i'm somewhat glad they will no longer use LLVM.
      - favorited 8y ago

tbrownaw 8y ago

And this is an unsourced assumption of bad faith. No, it's a reasonable interpretation of a definitive open-source project pushing back hard. It's also one portion of an example of people disagreeing about what's best for "the community", or in other words an example of where politics comes from. And you're showing another angle on that, which is people assuming the worst of eachother.