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Re: Why not contribute? (to GCC)
On 25 April 2010 17:04, Chris Lattner <clattner@apple.com> wrote:
> On Apr 25, 2010, at 7:59 AM, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On what do you base these assertions? ?Every point seems wrong to me.
>>>>
>>>> Quoting from the link: http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html
>>>
>>> The key distinction is that contributing to LLVM does not require you to sign a form (which isn't even publicly available) and mail it in to a busy and high-latency organization before non-trivial patches will be accepted.
>>
>> So, is the copyright disclaimer implicit in the patch submission? Who
>> defines the conditions?
>
> That web page is everything that there is. ?I am aware that this is not as legally air-tight as the FSF disclaimer, but empirically many companies seem to have no problem with it.
So, the copyright transfer is implicit in the patch submission
process. And any submitter that does not have a legal document stating
that his employer company allows the submitter to send that particular
code to LLVM is exposed to be sued not only by his/her employer but
also by the U. of Illinois. Nice.
I can understand companies not having problem with it. If something
goes wrong, they can always blame the employee because there is no
paper proving he or she had permission from his/her employer. Perhaps
the FSF is a bit too cautious, but this rings as a bit reckless. I
find surprising that the U. of Illinois has such relaxed approach to
copyright. But perhaps it is also in their interest to not ask many
questions. If something goes bad, they can just sue the individual
contributor rather than dealing with the whole legal department of a
company. Even more, if the company sues the contributor but not the U.
of Illinois, they may even get to keep the code. Sweet.
Have you made a poll in LLVM asking how many contributors actually
have some legal paper allowing them to contribute? That is how many
are currently legally exposed to a lawsuit. Would LLVM remove code if
a contributor starts doubting his legal position?
Cheers,
Manuel.