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And also, "it protects Swift" in their context always means "it protects Apple's Swift" unfortunately

jeremyjh 8y ago
No, it definitely applies protections to the entire Apache licensed work. People can fork it and make changes, rename the project and they will retain their patent license as long as they abide by the terms of the license.
- maxdesiatov 8y ago
  but what about reimplementing a compiler from scratch without reusing any of Apple's code? It wouldn't fall under a definition of Derivative Work under terms of Apache 2.0 then
  - jeremyjh 8y ago
    I agree, that is the real issue. I was responding to the comment that the protections were only for "Apple's Swift".
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    The trick would therefore be to pull in a little bit of Apple's code so you can argue that it's a derivative work and therefore covered by the patent license grant ;)
  - Twisell 8y ago
    If your going this way you must also take account for "reimplementation from scratch under restrictive licence”. Apache license don’t say anything about clean room reimplementation under other licence because it’s a tricky subject beyond the scope of the license. I personally think that if someone reimplement Swift, name it Schwift, guarantee it’s 200% faster (for some reasons), and then sell commercial licence of that it should be sued (but with such business plan I believe he’ll go bankrupt first). Apple logically won’t comment on what they will do in case of a "clean room" implementation because they have zero interest in anybody doing such a thing. And actually nobody have any interest in such a monstrosity (except maybe for theological reasons?). The project is goddam Appache2, fork it if you want, but spending any second trying to reimplement years of works is a total waste of time. Want to start something from scratch? Fine but do something original. Want to improve swift ecosystem ? Fine but work on the main project or on a clean fork!
    - maxdesiatov 8y ago
      Sorry, I'm not sure I understand this point. Why would I need a different license for this from scratch implementation? What if I want Apache 2.0 as well? Also, I'm convinced that many many people do have interest in this. Many people were interested in GCC existing in parallel with whatever other compilers were available. Heck, Chris Lattner's Clang wouldn't exist if C and C++ were "protected with patents from patent trolls". Are you saying that all these alternative compilers were a total waste of time?
    - tom_mellior 8y ago
      > I personally think that if someone reimplement Swift, name it Schwift, guarantee it’s 200% faster (for some reasons), and then sell commercial licence of that it should be sued Should? What rule, law, or moral code does it break to reimplement something?
      - wool_gather 8y ago
        If you start from a position of strong support for broad legal protection of "intellectual property", I can see that there would be an argument that a programming language as a whole could be locked up by a patent. As a possible analogy, (my understanding is that) Lego held a patent on the bricks at some point, and no clones could be produced because of that. Like you, I would have a pretty hard time being convinced that this was actually a good idea, though.

No, it definitely applies protections to the entire Apache licensed work. People can fork it and make changes, rename the project and they will retain their patent license as long as they abide by the terms of the license.

maxdesiatov 8y ago
but what about reimplementing a compiler from scratch without reusing any of Apple's code? It wouldn't fall under a definition of Derivative Work under terms of Apache 2.0 then
- jeremyjh 8y ago
  I agree, that is the real issue. I was responding to the comment that the protections were only for "Apple's Swift".
- yellowapple 8y ago
  The trick would therefore be to pull in a little bit of Apple's code so you can argue that it's a derivative work and therefore covered by the patent license grant ;)
- Twisell 8y ago
  If your going this way you must also take account for "reimplementation from scratch under restrictive licence”. Apache license don’t say anything about clean room reimplementation under other licence because it’s a tricky subject beyond the scope of the license. I personally think that if someone reimplement Swift, name it Schwift, guarantee it’s 200% faster (for some reasons), and then sell commercial licence of that it should be sued (but with such business plan I believe he’ll go bankrupt first). Apple logically won’t comment on what they will do in case of a "clean room" implementation because they have zero interest in anybody doing such a thing. And actually nobody have any interest in such a monstrosity (except maybe for theological reasons?). The project is goddam Appache2, fork it if you want, but spending any second trying to reimplement years of works is a total waste of time. Want to start something from scratch? Fine but do something original. Want to improve swift ecosystem ? Fine but work on the main project or on a clean fork!
  - maxdesiatov 8y ago
    Sorry, I'm not sure I understand this point. Why would I need a different license for this from scratch implementation? What if I want Apache 2.0 as well? Also, I'm convinced that many many people do have interest in this. Many people were interested in GCC existing in parallel with whatever other compilers were available. Heck, Chris Lattner's Clang wouldn't exist if C and C++ were "protected with patents from patent trolls". Are you saying that all these alternative compilers were a total waste of time?
  - tom_mellior 8y ago
    > I personally think that if someone reimplement Swift, name it Schwift, guarantee it’s 200% faster (for some reasons), and then sell commercial licence of that it should be sued Should? What rule, law, or moral code does it break to reimplement something?
    - wool_gather 8y ago
      If you start from a position of strong support for broad legal protection of "intellectual property", I can see that there would be an argument that a programming language as a whole could be locked up by a patent. As a possible analogy, (my understanding is that) Lego held a patent on the bricks at some point, and no clones could be produced because of that. Like you, I would have a pretty hard time being convinced that this was actually a good idea, though.