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TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

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Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#41

Post by Tomte »

jimjag wrote: post #35
Tomte wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can create a fork of any MIT licensed project right now, and relicense it as GPL A common misunderstanding, but no! You can incorporate the MIT project into your X-licensed project, and now have three parts you need to consider: the MIT project, your X project and your (presumably x-licensed) composition of the other two projects. It means, for example, that when distributing your composite project, downstream us…

The entire work can be licensed under GPL, but those parts that were MIT remain, individually, still under MIT. MIT specifically and explicitly allows for 'sublicense'ing

Correct. And the combined work needs to carry the MIT license text and copyright attributions for the MIT software authors. With binary distribution it must also be overt, not hidden in some source code drop, but directly accompanying the binary.

Many people who talk about relicensing never credit the MIT developers or distribute the MIT license text. "Because it's GPL now."

I don't think that you believe that, but many developers do.

Some don't see the need for source code scans for Open Source compliance, because the license.txt says GPL, so it's GPL. Prime example is the Linux kernel. There is code under different licenses in there, but people don't even read https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/COPYING till the end ("In addition, other licenses may also apply.") and conclude it's simply GPL 2 and nothing else.

Also be aware that sublicensing is not the same as relicensing.

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#42

Post by bananapub »

bogwog wrote: post #23
donatj wrote: post #14

There are 219 contributors going back over a decade. Did they all either consent to the repeated license changes or sign away their rights with an CLA? You can’t just relicense contributions willy-nilly - without an CLA or similar agreement assigning ownership, contributions retain copyright of their original author.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that I can create a fork of any MIT licensed project right now, and relicense it as GPL. I can't do that the other way around because GPL explicitly forbids it. > without an CLA or similar agreement assigning ownership, contributions retain copyright of their original author. Wouldn't that mean that any contribution without an CLA to an open source project is unlicensed? Mean…

> I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that I can create a fork of any MIT licensed project right now, and relicense it as GPL

absolutely not, you can't relicense other people's code.

you can combine some MIT code with some GPL code you wrote, though, and the aggregate can be distributed under the intersection of both licenses, which is ~the GPL.

the license of each bit of code is still whatever license it had originally, though.

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#43

Post by panzi »

ssddanbrown wrote: post #15
Y_Y wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be out of the question to relicense your project to GPL? I guess you want to allow people to use your work without releasing their source, but that's at odds with the fact that TinyMCE doesn't want that any more and you presumably rely on their work too. I certainly don't want to reopen any tired debates, I'm just interested in what the perspective of a downstream developer is like here.

That's definitely an option, but I originally chose the MIT due to the simplicity & low friction/requirement for users, and for me it'd be a shame to change that, especially as it could impact users that have been using my software over the last 8 years. While I've gained a lot of understand & respect for GPL licenses over the years of being involved in open source, I'd still have a preference for MIT for this partic…

I thought when your program/library has a more permissive license you can use a GPL library without changing your license. You just need to make this clear so that someone using your code knows that it also pulls in GPL code and thus they cannot be more restrictive (e.g. closed source) than GPL. Only your program will be MIT licensed, the GPL library stays GPL of course. (And since MIT is more permissive anyone can fork your code and put it under GPL.) Did I misunderstand anything?

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#44

Post by panzi »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #37
consp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if modules are designed to run linked together in a shared address space. How does this not apply to javascript?

That happens after distribution of "unlinked" code. GPL's copyleft doesn't apply to binaries that aren't distributed.

But would bundled and minified JavaScript not be very much like a binary? And isn't it distributed every time someone opens the web page?

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#45

Post by ssddanbrown »

panzi wrote: post #43
ssddanbrown wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely an option, but I originally chose the MIT due to the simplicity & low friction/requirement for users, and for me it'd be a shame to change that, especially as it could impact users that have been using my software over the last 8 years. While I've gained a lot of understand & respect for GPL licenses over the years of being involved in open source, I'd still have a preference for MIT for this partic…

I thought when your program/library has a more permissive license you can use a GPL library without changing your license. You just need to make this clear so that someone using your code knows that it also pulls in GPL code and thus they cannot be more restrictive (e.g. closed source) than GPL. Only your program will be MIT licensed, the GPL library stays GPL of course. (And since MIT is more permissive anyone can f…

That's generally what LGPL is. It does get a bit murky outside of standard compiled applications though.

Otherwise, I think it's generally the other way around. Permissive can be used in stronger copy-left licenses, but strongly copyleft libraries can't be used (there's a lot of detail skipped when it comes to what counts as "used" here) in works provided under a more permissive library since a permissive license doesn't provide the terms required by the strong copyleft license (which generally try to ensure freedom of the code, which permissive licenses don't do so well).

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#46

Post by immibis »

lenerdenator wrote: post #10
immibis wrote: post #3

I hope Redis's license being changed makes more people wake up to the reality of the differences between copyleft and permissive. Permissive is, in practice, public domain. Any corporation can take your code and use it as closed-source. All they have to do is credit your name somewhere deep in the documentation, a completely meaningless gesture. They also can't sue you for copying "their" library. But that's about it…

To me, this is, over the long-term, a self-solving problem. Especially for simpler projects. It took a decade for GNU/Linux to get to the point where CTOs would throw it in the same category as commercial UNIXes, but when that happened, well... when was the last time you logged into a brand-spankin'-new HP-UX machine? And that was an operating system, one of the more ambitious types of software projects. Redis is tra…

> There are already forks that are FOSS.

FWIW Redis is still FOSS since SSPL is FOSS - very strong copyleft. It's not a proprietary license, it's rather "more AGPL than AGPL."

Even if [the OSI](https://opensource.org/sponsors) disagrees.

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#47

Post by immibis »

worthless-trash wrote: post #25
TheChaplain wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL forces you to always supply the source code but only if you distribute the application. E.g. if you fork Nano and sell or make binaries available for download for free, people have the right to ask you for the source code. If you don't distribute it in any form, then you don't need to.[1] With MIT you can fork, distribute and people can't demand anything. [1]: Contrary to popular misinformation, modified GPL soft…

> people have the right to ask you for the source code. People you distributed binaries to have a right to the source code via the same method that the binaries are provided in. Or at least that was my understanding.

If it's a non-commercial affair, you can give them a "written offer valid for at least 3 years" and then you don't have to actually supply it unless someone asks.

In practice, this isn't a very good option to take. Much better to provide it on a "network server" as they were called at the time the license was written.

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#48

Post by homarp »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #38
rapnie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drew Devault forked Redis, made the fork LGPL, then got so many questions that he created a fun little licensing quiz: https://fosstodon.org/@drewdevault/112156829031615403

Can anyone explain why the answer to the second question ( https://fosstodon.org/@drewdevault/112156847020462949 ) is "no"? The MIT license grants all the rights that the GPL requires to be granted for derivative works (it is GPL-compatible). Is the problem here just that they don't distribute or offer the source code of the GPL-licensed library along with the pre-built binaries?

it is because GPL is viral

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#49

Post by riffraff »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #38
rapnie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drew Devault forked Redis, made the fork LGPL, then got so many questions that he created a fun little licensing quiz: https://fosstodon.org/@drewdevault/112156829031615403

Can anyone explain why the answer to the second question ( https://fosstodon.org/@drewdevault/112156847020462949 ) is "no"? The MIT license grants all the rights that the GPL requires to be granted for derivative works (it is GPL-compatible). Is the problem here just that they don't distribute or offer the source code of the GPL-licensed library along with the pre-built binaries?

I would like to know too. I suspect the question should have been phrased "they offer pre build binaries but no source code".

Re: TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL

#50

Post by pjmlp »

donatj wrote: post #14

There are 219 contributors going back over a decade. Did they all either consent to the repeated license changes or sign away their rights with an CLA? You can’t just relicense contributions willy-nilly - without an CLA or similar agreement assigning ownership, contributions retain copyright of their original author.

They can, because MIT.
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