Re: libstdc++ still has license conditions of SGI STL on top of GNU GPLv3+GCC Runtime Exception, right?

[Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 26 May 2020 at 18:00, P. - <pressbuttonsharder@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Maybe because the "it-is-going-to-end-up-in-the-binary-code" terms
> > don't exist for those licenses. The terms make no mention of object
> > code. Contrast that with the GPL, Apache, BSD-3-clause, and XFree86
> > licences which specifically talk about object code or binary form.
>
> Ah, that's how you interpret it. I see, since the license in the header files is akin to the "Old style" MIT (see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:MIT?rd=Licensing/MIT#Old_Style ), and MIT-alikes normally don't talk about the object code, there seem to be a difference in interpretation of MIT and MIT-alike licenses as to whether to include the license/notices with the binaries (Jonathan, the links are included for someone who will stumble upon this post while searching; I believe you know what I'm talking about and don't suggest you to sift through them):
> https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/257#issuecomment-183517808
> https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/8161/license-that-requires-attribution-to-end-users
> https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4058/what-is-the-point-of-including-the-mit-copyright-text-if-you-use-someones-code
> https://www.quora.com/Does-the-MIT-license-require-attribution-in-a-binary-only-distribution
> https://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#legacy-license-structure
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12560056
> and so on. Both Chrome and Firefox (under windows) include MIT-licenses for various libraries in their binary distributions and I saw one Huawei's PDF also doing this (one of them was for STLPort: document "HUAWEI ME906s-158&ME909s Series Module Open Source Software Notice" if anyone is interested). As for myself I'm on the "'this software'/'copy' covers derivative works/objective code"-side, but there doesn't seem to be any authoritative source on this so we, indeed, go into "talk to your lawyer" territory and I'm going to leave it at that.

As one of your links above says, the libc++ library in LLVM was
previously dual-licensed with the LLVM license (which *does* require
notices to appear in documentation for redistribution in binary form)
and "the MIT license" (not actually the same one as the HP/SGI ones,
but similar) in order to ensure that users don't have to add copyright
notices when compiling binaries using the libc++ headers.

So your interpretation of MIT-alikes is more paranoid than the
interpretation of Apple and Google and other LLVM stakeholders with
very large legal teams that are very cautious about licensing. They
specifically used an MIT-alike to work around the binary
redistribution clause of the standard LLVM license.