[ptp-dev] RE: ANTLR licensing issues

[Doug Schaefer <DSchaefer@xxxxxxx>]

Actually, the issue isn't licensing. BSD is a very friendly license that
should be easily compatible with EPL. The issue is whether ANTLR is IP
clean, i.e. can we trace where every bit of contribution has come from and
are all of the contributions legally acceptable for inclusion in Eclipse
projects.

I'm pretty sure this applies to the generated code as well as the run-time,
especially with ANTLR where most of the logic (i.e. IP) of the parser and
lexer algorithms is in the generated code.

As this becomes a serious issue, we should probably start the IP approval
process sooner than later. As you guys are probably the furthest along, I'll
let you guys make that decision.

BTW, which project are you contributing the Fortran 2003 grammar, I'm
assuming Photran, but the Photran front seems dead quiet right now? Do you
have this code checked in?

Doug Schaefer, QNX Software Systems
Eclipse CDT Project Lead, Tools PMC Member


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Craig Rasmussen [mailto:crasmussen@xxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 11:50 AM
> To: Parallel Tools Platform general developers
> Cc: Doug Schaefer; Chris Recoskie; Christopher D. Rickett
> Subject: ANTLR licensing issues
> 
> At the last PTP telecon, Doug brought up the unpleasant possibility
> that we may not be able to use ANTLR because of licensing issues.  As
> we are rather far along with the Fortran 2003 grammar, this would be
> unfortunate.  Chris Rickett and I have been discussing the
> possibility of replacing the ANTLR runtime if there are licensing
> issues with it.  Fortran lexing is problematic anyway, so it wouldn't
> be too far out of bounds for us to replace the whole runtime.
> 
> My question is, is there any licensing issues with the EPL using
> ANTLR generated files (both parser and lexer) and not the runtime
> (jar files)?
> 
> Cheers,
> Craig