On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 7:39 AM, Stefan Behnel <[email protected]> wrote: > > Sturla Molden, 19.07.2014 00:36: > > Robert Bradshaw wrote: > >> It's not just the initial patch; I'm primarily worried about the > >> maintenance burden > > > > And also, will it break utility code and binary blobs? It might not even be > > safe to put it in every file. > > > > And when put in files with utility C code, will it be included in the > > generated .c file and taint this file with a notification about Cython's > > Apache license? > > Well, on the technical side, stuff at the beginning of a utility code file > should just be ignored, up to the first header line (starting with a > sequence of at least 5 comment characters). Some of them already contain > leading comments anyway. > > On the legal side, the licensing state of the generated code does not > change by copying the license description from the global license file into > each code file, because the global license already applies to the complete > code base anyway (unless stated otherwise). > > However, what *is* the licensing state of the generated code? Strictly > speaking, the code generated by Cython, all parts of which are embedded in > Cython's own source code, could be considered a "derivative work" by some.
I suspect that "some" includes most lawyers and judges ;-). There's tons of copyrightable code copied into Cython output. [...] > From my side, that statement definitely still applies. I really don't want > to have anything to say on what users do with the code generated from their > own source code. I do not even consider the generated code a "derivative > work" myself, but IANAL... > > Anyway, as far as I understand it, the worst case is that people who ship > Cython generated code have to add a copy of the Apache License to their > package as well as any attribution notices we ship. That's annoying, but > not really the end of the world. No, the worst case is that GPL2 projects can't legally use code written in Cython (perhaps even indirectly via other projects) :-(. This might be okay because of the language in the GPL that's designed to make it possible to write e.g. GPL'ed Win32 programs, but I'm not at all sure. > Also, utility code files could be exempt from the license explicitly by > stating so (although they'd then need another license to allow for safe > contributions to them). There's substantial prior art for this kind of thing, see e.g. the GCC runtime exception, the Classpath exception, etc. You might want to send an email to [email protected] describing the situation and asking for advice. (See https://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/) -n -- Nathaniel J. Smith Postdoctoral researcher - Informatics - University of Edinburgh http://vorpus.org _______________________________________________ cython-devel mailing list [email protected] https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/cython-devel
