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PSA: Changing the License to MIT #397
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I'm supporting the switch to MIT. |
Just gonna tag any contributors for their opinion. I apologize in advance for any spam, just want to make sure no one is left it in case they want to voice their opiniont @fpo @sEpt0r @vk2tds @X-Y @DaAwesomeP @cltnschlosser @crash7 @jan-r @madmalkav @audetto @bessl @lumbric @ram-0000 @safaorhan @hmeine @sstefanov @toddtreece @levsa @bengtmartensson @joshuajnoble @Informatic @ElectricRCAircraftGuy @PaoloP74 @Lauszus @henkel @ivankravets @MCUdude @chaeplin @AnalysIR @shirriff @csBlueChip |
Let @shirriff decide. Not only is he the original author, but there is still his "smell" over most of the work. If he wanted a copy-left license, that should be respected. BTW, the way "libraries" in the Arduino IDE works, makes it unciear if there are libraries in the legal sense at all. Recall that an Arduino "library" is not an *.a or *.so or *.dll file, but rather a bunch of files the IDE is compiling together with the main program ("sketch"). I may be wrong. But if I am right, that would make library licenses a bad choice. Personally, I am a proponent of "copy-left" licenses, with the option of dual licensing for the use in non-free contexts. |
All work I have ever released is MIT licensed. "Free as in free"
If we wish to release as GPL, please understand we MUST conform to the
following little excerpt from the GPL-HowTo on Gnu.org
How to use GNU licenses for your own software
This is a brief explanation of how to place a program under the GNU General
Public License <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>, Lesser General
Public License <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html>, or Affero General
Public License <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html>. For the GNU Free
Documentation License <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html>, we have
a separate
page <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-howto.html>.
If you are looking for more detailed information, consider perusing our
list of frequently asked questions about our licenses
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html>.
If you are considering using the GNU Lesser General Public License, please
read the article “Why you shouldn't use the LGPL for your next library
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html>” first. The article
explains why it may be better to use the ordinary GPL instead, and how we
would make the decision.
Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two elements
to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such as “Copyright
1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying permission, saying that the
program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
(or the Lesser GPL).
The copyright notice should include the year in which you finished
preparing the release (so if you finished it in 1998 but didn't post it
until 1999, use 1998). You should add the proper year for each release; for
example, “Copyright 1998, 1999 Terry Jones” if some versions were finished
in 1998 and some were finished in 1999. If several people helped write the
code, use all their names.
For software with several releases over multiple years, it's okay to use a
range (“2008-2010”) instead of listing individual years (“2008, 2009,
2010”) if and only if every year in the range, inclusive, really is a
“copyrightable” year that would be listed individually; *and* you make an
explicit statement in your documentation about this usage.
Always use the English word “Copyright”; by international convention, this
is used worldwide, even for material in other languages. The copyright
symbol “©” can be included if you wish (and your character set supports
it), but it's not necessary. There is no legal significance to using the
three-character sequence “(C)”, although it does no harm.
You should also include a copy of the license itself somewhere in the
distribution of your program. All programs, whether they are released under
the GPL or LGPL, should include the text version of the GPL
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt>. In GNU programs the license is
usually in a file called COPYING.
If you are releasing your program under the LGPL, you should also include the
text version of the LGPL <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.txt>, usually
in a file called COPYING.LESSER. Please note that, since the LGPL is a set
of additional permissions on top of the GPL, it's important to include both
licenses so users have all the materials they need to understand their
rights.
If you are releasing your program under the GNU AGPL, you only need to
include the text version of the GNU AGPL
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.txt>.
If you have copied code from other programs covered by the same license,
copy their copyright notices too. Put all the copyright notices together,
right near the top of each file.
It is very important for practical reasons to include contact information
for how to reach you, perhaps in the README file, but this has nothing to
do with the legal issues of applying the license.
The copying permission statement should come right after the copyright
notices. For a one-file program, the statement (for the GPL) should look
like this:
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
For programs that are more than one file, it is better to replace “this
program” with the name of the program, and begin the statement with a line
saying “This file is part of NAME”. For instance,
This file is part of Foobar.
Foobar is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Foobar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Foobar. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
This statement should go near the beginning of every source file, close to
the copyright notices. When using the Lesser GPL, insert the word “Lesser”
before “General” in *all three* places. When using the GNU AGPL, insert the
word “Affero” before “General” in *all three* places.
For interactive programs, it is usually a good idea to make the program
print out a brief notice about copyright and copying permission when it
starts up. See the end of the GNU GPL
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html#howto> for more information
about this.
If you are releasing your program under the GNU AGPL, and it can interact
with users over a network, the program should offer its source to those
users in some way. For example, if your program is a web application, its
interface could display a “Source” link that leads users to an archive of
the code. The GNU AGPL is flexible enough that you can choose a method
that's suitable for your specific program—see section 13 for details.
There is no legal requirement to register your copyright with anyone;
simply distributing the program makes it copyrighted. However, it is a very
good idea to register the copyright with the US Registry of Copyrights,
because that puts you in a stronger position against anyone who violates
the license in the US. Most other countries have no system of copyright
registration.
It's wise to ask your employer or school, if any, to sign a copyright
disclaimer for the work, so they cannot claim to hold it later. Below is a
sample copyright disclaimer; just alter the names and program description
as appropriate:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
“Gnomovision” (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Moe Ghoul>, 1 April 1989
Moe Ghoul, President of Vice
We would like to list all free software programs in the Free Software
Directory, including all programs licensed under the GPL (any version).
Please see the Directory web page <http://directory.fsf.org/> for
information and an online submission form.
It is also possible to make your program a GNU package, a part of the GNU
Project. (That's if we like the program—we have to look at it first, and
decide.) If you might be interested in joining up with the GNU Project in
this way, please see our GNU software evaluation page
<https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html> for more information and a short
questionnaire.
But you are welcome to use any of our licenses even if your program is not
a GNU package; indeed, we hope you will. They're available to everyone. If
you'd like to advertise your use of a particular license, feel free to use one
of our logos <https://www.gnu.org/graphics/license-logos.html>.
…On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 9:02 AM, Bengt Martensson ***@***.***> wrote:
Let @shirriff <https://github.com/shirriff> decide. Not only is he the
original author, but there is still his "smell" over most of the work. If
he wanted a copy-left license, that should be respected.
BTW, the way "libraries" in the Arduino IDE works, makes it unciear if
there are libraries in the legal sense at all. Recall that an Arduino
"library" is not an *.a or *.so or *.dll file, but rather a bunch of files
the IDE is *compiling* together with the main program ("sketch"). I may
be wrong. But if I am right, that would make library licenses
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html> a bad choice.
Personally, I am a proponent of "copy-left" licenses, with the option of
dual licensing for the use in non-free contexts.
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I'm fine with the decision made by @z3t0 as well. |
No problem here either. Not that I've done any major contributions... ;)
|
I'm fine with @z3t0's decision too. MIT can be used by a broader context of people. |
Support MIT too, @z3t0 👍 |
I'm good with MIT |
+1 MIT |
Just as an update. I still plan on moving to the new licence and the next major version of this library will be licenced under the MIT. |
Also, you can remove the "Copyright Ken Shirriff" from the files that still have it. |
@z3t0 @bengtmartensson @shirriff @csBlueChip I changed the license with the commit above. |
Looks good to me
…On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 1:52 PM Armin ***@***.***> wrote:
@z3t0 <https://github.com/z3t0> @bengtmartensson
<https://github.com/bengtmartensson> @shirriff
<https://github.com/shirriff> @csBlueChip <https://github.com/csBlueChip>
I changed the license with the commit above.
Please veryfy if anything is correct, especially the 3 first lines of the
license.txt file. Maybe they can be deleted?
@shirriff <https://github.com/shirriff> I changed all you copyright notes
and link to Initially coded 2009 Ken Shirriff http://www.righto.com, I
hope, this is OK.
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Is anyone opposed to switching the license for all new versions of the library from LGPL to MIT? Just to be clear, all previous versions will remain LGPL.
Update
I thought it might be wise to just mention briefly why I would like to change the Licensing. Without getting into a holy war, I personally prefer permissive licenses and not restrictive ones. I respect that GPL advocates for software "freedom" but unfortunately that means different things to different people. To me GPL simply means a new set of restrictions whereas MIT allows you to practically do anything.
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