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Licensing issues

Open FedericoCeratto opened this issue 10 years ago • 12 comments

As it happened before in #6, at the moment 30 themes do not have a license file. This would make it tricky to release a themes collection package (see e.g. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=759179 )

I'd like to suggest few alternative solutions.

The simple one would be to create a global license file at the root directory and state in the README.rst file that any theme provided without a license automatically inherits the global one. Clarification: contributors will see the default license when creating PR and agree to it. This does not apply retroactively to existing themes!

Even better, contributors could be asked to always inherit the root license and this would greatly simplify the packager's life.

Third option, having a license check script that is run as a TravisCI job every time somebody commits to the repository and fails the build if a license file is missing.

FedericoCeratto avatar Jan 02 '15 20:01 FedericoCeratto

That seems something interesting to do! Anyone in the contributors would like to volunteer on making this happen?

almet avatar Apr 08 '17 12:04 almet

The simple one would be to create a global license file at the root directory and state in the README.rst file that any theme provided without a license automatically inherits the global one.

Copyright doesn’t work that way. Even if it did, it’d be an awful move community-wise. (source: am lawyer, specialise in IT and FOSS licensing)

Even better, contributors could be asked to always inherit the root license and this would greatly simplify the packager's life.

That would be an option, preferably combined with the CI option below. I.e. if no license file is found, the committer/merge proposer would be asked to add a license file, with the suggestion to simply use the default one, if they don’t have any specific reason otherwise (e.g. based on some other code).

Third option, having a license check script that is run as a TravisCI job every time somebody commits to the repository and fails the build if a license file is missing.

This is a good suggestion. I haven’t played with TravisCI yet, but am willing to take a stab when I find the time.

All this is still treating the whole copyright and licensing question very lightly, as themes probably include code that was borrowed elsewhere and those in turn have to be properly licensed and the licenses compatible etc.; but this would indeed be an amazing great step in the right direction!

silverhook avatar Apr 08 '17 14:04 silverhook

@wilsonfreitas - think you could add a license for aboutwilson?

adrn avatar Sep 05 '17 23:09 adrn

License for simple-bootstrap

As of now it is not obvious that anyone has permission to use this theme on their website. Please consider choosing one of the open source licenses: https://choosealicense.com/

I suggest MIT license. Unless previous contributors specified the license on their works via other channels, changing a license requires agreement from each one of them. Therefore, I'm pinging all of previous contributors.

Do you agree to change the license for simple-bootstrap to MIT license?

  • [ ] @charlesreid1
  • [x] @adamatan
  • [ ] @cowlicks
  • [x] @smu
  • [ ] @espern
  • [x] @nicoddemus
  • [x] @housne

Please reply in the comments. Thank you

sio avatar Sep 17 '19 10:09 sio

I agree to changing the license to MIT. 👍

nicoddemus avatar Sep 17 '19 10:09 nicoddemus

Consider also adopting best https://reuse.software best practices to mark the code.

silverhook avatar Sep 17 '19 12:09 silverhook

Copyright doesn’t work that way. Even if it did, it’d be an awful move community-wise. (source: am lawyer, specialise in IT and FOSS licensing)

I added a clarification around the term "automatically" to convey what I meant.

FedericoCeratto avatar Sep 17 '19 15:09 FedericoCeratto

The simple one would be to create a global license file at the root directory and state in the README.rst file that any theme provided without a license automatically inherits the global one. Clarification: contributors will see the default license when creating PR and agree to it. This does not apply retroactively to existing themes!

This does sound better. You could also put a git hook into this, or use the DCO.

silverhook avatar Sep 17 '19 17:09 silverhook

I agree!

smu avatar Sep 17 '19 19:09 smu

Agree!

On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 8:57 PM Adrian Price-Whelan [email protected] wrote:

@wilsonfreitas https://github.com/wilsonfreitas - think you could add a license for aboutwilson?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/getpelican/pelican-themes/issues/277#issuecomment-327335638, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABgrMn_3m9szEkPeO9IO4Uy98I_2BPh8ks5sfd_kgaJpZM4DN3Y8 .

-- Wilson Freitas http://wilsonfreitas.github.io

wilsonfreitas avatar Sep 18 '19 12:09 wilsonfreitas

License for simple-bootstrap

As of now it is not obvious that anyone has permission to use this theme on their website. Please consider choosing one of the open source licenses: https://choosealicense.com/

I suggest MIT license. Unless previous contributors specified the license on their works via other channels, changing a license requires agreement from each one of them. Therefore, I'm pinging all of previous contributors.

Do you agree to change the license for simple-bootstrap to MIT license?

  • [ ] @charlesreid1
  • [x] @adamatan
  • [ ] @cowlicks
  • [x] @smu
  • [ ] @espern
  • [x] @nicoddemus
  • [ ] @housne

Please reply in the comments. Thank you

agree

housne avatar Sep 18 '19 15:09 housne