Open Source License

[Seanitzel]

This great project does not have a license, which makes it illegal to use in other projects...

Would be great if you add a open source license :)

[rowild]

The package.json adds "MIT". I am not a license pro, but isn't that enough?

[Seanitzel]

mm im not sure honestly, i think it would be best to add to the repo a LICENSE file, e.g

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2019 <Insert name>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

And then no one would have any doubts and it will be clear immidiatly to anyone who visits this repo :)

[rowild]

Interesting topic. I just read about SPDX: https://www.npmjs.com/package/spdx-expression-parse

To my understanding, the license referred to in the package.json's license field is the one to adhere to. A complete text file does not seem to be required. In case there is sth like 'unlicensed', you would probably get troubles, but for a license like "MIT", the license is actually given.

That at least is my understanding...

[Seanitzel]

I see, then sorry for the trouble!

I'm just used to finding packages and looking at the top of the repo for the license, but if that is the case then great.

Thanks for the quick response btw :)

[rowild]

I am not the project holder nor developer. I just added my thoughts, because the interests me, too! Please don't take my word for anything! I hope that the project owner still can add some clarifying information!

[mscottnelson]

I would be happy to add the LICENSE file if that provides additional clarity for folks. The package.json does not contain a license holder, but does cite @taylorbf as the author. IANAL, but although what you're allowed to do with the package ought to be pretty clear, the copyright holder(s) is less clear. I would nominate @taylorbf from 2019 onward, but don't know the whole history of the project. If the license were ever tested, I suspect that all contributors would implicitly hold the copyright for their own contribution. Along the same lines of clarifying this for folks, it would probably be good to enhance the CONTRIBUTING doc to specify that all contributors assign their copyright to the project. It's easy enough to do this and may have some benefits, because for the project to be adopted by some larger open source initiative, it makes life easier because it does not require seeking out permission from every single code contributor from the library's beginning.