Status of re-license?

Community LLVM Foundation
1

Hi, I’d like to make a contribution. As it is currently written, I do not understand the requirements for being able to contribute a patch.

This page seems to suggest that all contributions are currently being licensed under both the old and new license.

In the interim, all contributions to the project will be made under the terms of both the new license and the legacy license scheme (each of which is described below).

And there is no indication that this has been completed. On this page, at the bottom, it says that the aim is to have this completed by January 2019. If it has been completed, I don’t think it has been communicated well, because all public facing documentation still refers to it being in progress.

Could you offer some guidance on what the current status of the re-license is and how I should communicate this to my company’s legal department?

2

Hi, I'd like to make a contribution. As it is currently written, I do not understand the requirements for being able to contribute a patch.

This page <LLVM Developer Policy — LLVM 18.0.0git documentation; seems to suggest that all contributions are currently being licensed under both the old and new license.

> In the interim, *all contributions to the project will be made under the terms of both the new license and the legacy license scheme* (each of which is described below).

And there is no indication that this has been completed. On this page <https://llvm.org/foundation/relicensing/&gt;, at the bottom, it says that the aim is to have this completed by January 2019. If it has been completed, I don't think it has been communicated well, because all public facing documentation still refers to it being in progress.

The process is still in progress. The online documentation is accurate.

-Hal

3

The process is still in progress. The online documentation is accurate.

Well, except for the January 2019 date. It would be good to update that to a more sensible target.

–paulr

4

The process is still in progress. The online documentation is accurate.

Well, except for the January 2019 date. It would be good to update that to a more sensible target.

--paulr

I definitely agree. We hope to have a new, sensible target soon.

-Hal

5

What does this mean in terms of new contributors? In order to be licensed under both old and new license, there should be some kind of CLA involved I’m assuming. But I don’t see anything. What do i tell my legal department?

6

What does this mean in terms of new contributors? In order to be licensed under both old and new license, there should be some kind of CLA involved I’m assuming. But I don’t see anything. What do i tell my legal department?

The LLVM project has not had a CLA, and that continues to be the case. Contributions are subject to the conditions specified in our online policy documents.

LLVM's current license is specified in https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/master/llvm/LICENSE.TXT, and currently, it contains both the new and old licenses. Once the relicensing process is complete, we'll update that file.

If someone from your legal department has specific questions, please let us know by sending a note to board@llvm.org.

-Hal

7

Hi Zachary,

We ask that all new contributions be contributed under the terms of both the new and the old license. This allows people to use it under the old license during the transition, but allows us to eventually get to the new one.

Our intention is to eventually drop the old license. However, if we drop it at revision X, people could still use the codebase as of revision X-1 under the old license if they want to.

There is no CLA required for this sort of thing. A CLA is required when you want to change the license of a contribution post-facto, which is something that many contributors are not willing to agree to.

-Chris

8

* Hal Finkel via llvm-foundation:

The process is still in progress. The online documentation is accurate.

Does this mean that the releases since LLVM 9.0 misrepresent the
license of the source code, and all those SPDX tags are wrong?

<https://releases.llvm.org/9.0.0/LICENSE.TXT&gt; says this:

The LLVM Project is under the Apache License v2.0 with LLVM Exceptions:

Unlike <https://llvm.org/LICENSE.txt&gt;, it also mentions the “Legacy
LLVM License”. But I think a reasonable interpretation is that this
license only applies to the files that do not reference the Apache
Software License Version 2.0, and instead point to the LLVM License.