111–120 of 198 posts
Is it really OK that the top of the license calls it "Apache License"? https://foundation.llvm.org/relicensing/LICENSE.txt You need to scroll to the bottom to see that its not.
There is a clause in the license which implies that almost everybody who uses GitHub/GitLab/etc. to work on an Apache 2.0 project in the common workflows is in breech of the license.
Specifically, the license says that every file with modifications has to include a corresponding notice that the file was changed. Nobody does this in practice.
Unfortunately the license is simply badly written.
Licenses like the GPL don't have this problem because they only require that a modified version of the software is clearly marked as such without stating how that marking should be done. So the metadata contained in the Git history should be enough to satisfy those superior licenses.
Racket had to do this to go from lGPL to Mit, it was a long process. But they did it to make the language more accessible to developers. Developers are scared away by lGPL. Not all contributions were relicensed (resulting in code being rewritten), and we lost some code in the standard library (the csv parser). Now Racket is trying to make it more friendly to people by created a new language (called Rhombus for now) t…
> Developers are scared away by lGPL. I see GPL as a sign of quality and am attracted by projects using it. It's a promise nobody will ever take that thing away from me once I've started using it. I'm a developer, by the way. :-) Edit: Not to mention that some people even using GCC, Linux and Java.
What GPL does is make sure that code that is built on top of that will also be accessible to you, if the product it's used in is made public. But your own contributions and anything MIT-licensed it is added to will never be legally taken away from you.
FWIW, going with Apache 2.0 is/was a mistake. There is a clause in the license which implies that almost everybody who uses GitHub/GitLab/etc. to work on an Apache 2.0 project in the common workflows is in breech of the license. Specifically, the license says that every file with modifications has to include a corresponding notice that the file was changed. Nobody does this in practice. Unfortunately the license is s…
Can't you achieve this easily with a git hook or something like that?
This sounds unsustainable. Will a death of a core contributor mean that the project is stuck on a license forever?
"If copyright does apply and the code is still in the code base, we can remove the contribution. Depending on whether current contributors and users still value the effect of that contribution, it may need to be reimplemented."
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Saying that corporations prefer something they can profit from without giving back vs something they can not is circular reasoning to me. Conversely if you look on the other side you'll see developers bitten by permissive software licences (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, ...).
"without giving back" is a bit of an exaggeration. You could have a giant 20M line proprietary codebase, and if you incorporate a 20-line function from a GPL source, GPL says you need to relicense the whole thing. I prefer the MPLv2, it lets commercial users actually use the code, but they still have to contribute back any changes they make.
Anyway, because the fact that people think GPL is that extensive is enough to create unnecessary problems, I too prefer MPL, where the copyleft scope is defined very clearly for its use case.
My question may sound naive, but why not use BSD zero close license from the start?
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It's not the developers who are afraid, it's the companies who want to use the code for free, for proprietary purpose, and redistribute it. They want to take as much as possible but don't want to give anything.
I would rephrase to "they want to take as much as possible but don't want to give back the entire codebase using the free software".
(GPL does. It is part of the contract: get some, give some.)
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> This is the same for Australian developers. I don't see any sign of this being the case in my searching. This document ( https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=628b5bca-b7d5... ) suggests that Australia does recognize perpetual licenses ("Does the law in your jurisdiction recognise the validity of ‘perpetual’ software licences? ... Yes."). Would you provide a citation? > For example, it is conceivable that…
> As noted above, I'm skeptical that this right exists in Australia. The right to control the integrity of one's work is a Moral Right, and moral rights fall outside of copyrights in Australia. A very basic introduction is here [0]. Granting the use of a work in perpetuity is permitted, but revoking that perpetuity is also permitted and cannot be limited. > But if it does, the worst that would happen is that a person…
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Which provider? What was their domain name?
Just Ctrl+F their name in the spreadsheet.