Why Clang

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 23:57:17 +0200 (CEST), Wojciech Puchar wrote:
> from what i know (still, possibly incorrent) if i am hired as a programmer 
> and write a program, this program belong to the company and i couldn't use 
> it everywhere at least officially.

That is highly debatable and mostly subject to the content
of your programmer's contract. In most cases, one would
assume that by receiving a payment, you give the "rights
of creator" to that company.

But it doesn't neccessarily have to be the case! Imagine
a photographer who takes photos of you, e. g. for a new
passport. You pay the photographer for the developed
(today: printed) photos you receive, for example 4 or 6
pieces. You do _not_ obtain the "right regarding the image"
by that payment. The photographer (as the creator of the
image) still owns it. You can buy it separately.

(At least this is the case here in Germany according to
the law.)

To translate this to a programmer's job:

You're being paid to write a program for a customer. You
deliver the program. That's what you are paid for. Still
the source code is yours (as _you_ are the creator, no
matter who you sold "a copy" to). So I would assume that
you can still use the program for further projects that
run independently from that customer.

EXCEPT - of course, there is a contract specifying otherwise.



> So - if authors of any project, no matter how numerous, will all 
> without exception agree that they want to get rid of GPL, then - they 
> always can turn it to BSD 
> licenced ? am i right?

A general consensus of the issuers of the license ("continuous
licensing") could maybe do that, I assume. Still there would
be the possibility to create a fork (common means in open source
when something needs to be changed that doesn't go well with
"mainstream"), and that fork could keep the old license. Now
there are two independent projects.

BUT - as everyone is free to obtain, modify and re-issue GPL
source code, I'm not sure such a consensus could be reached.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...