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Relicense under dual MIT/Apache-2.0

Open emberian opened this issue 8 years ago • 42 comments

This issue was automatically generated. Feel free to close without ceremony if you do not agree with re-licensing or if it is not possible for other reasons. Respond to @cmr with any questions or concerns, or pop over to #rust-offtopic on IRC to discuss.

You're receiving this because someone (perhaps the project maintainer) published a crates.io package with the license as "MIT" xor "Apache-2.0" and the repository field pointing here.

TL;DR the Rust ecosystem is largely Apache-2.0. Being available under that license is good for interoperation. The MIT license as an add-on can be nice for GPLv2 projects to use your code.

Why?

The MIT license requires reproducing countless copies of the same copyright header with different names in the copyright field, for every MIT library in use. The Apache license does not have this drawback. However, this is not the primary motivation for me creating these issues. The Apache license also has protections from patent trolls and an explicit contribution licensing clause. However, the Apache license is incompatible with GPLv2. This is why Rust is dual-licensed as MIT/Apache (the "primary" license being Apache, MIT only for GPLv2 compat), and doing so would be wise for this project. This also makes this crate suitable for inclusion and unrestricted sharing in the Rust standard distribution and other projects using dual MIT/Apache, such as my personal ulterior motive, the Robigalia project.

Some ask, "Does this really apply to binary redistributions? Does MIT really require reproducing the whole thing?" I'm not a lawyer, and I can't give legal advice, but some Google Android apps include open source attributions using this interpretation. Others also agree with it. But, again, the copyright notice redistribution is not the primary motivation for the dual-licensing. It's stronger protections to licensees and better interoperation with the wider Rust ecosystem.

How?

To do this, get explicit approval from each contributor of copyrightable work (as not all contributions qualify for copyright, due to not being a "creative work", e.g. a typo fix) and then add the following to your README:

## License

Licensed under either of

 * Apache License, Version 2.0, ([LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
 * MIT license ([LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

### Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any
additional terms or conditions.

and in your license headers, if you have them, use the following boilerplate (based on that used in Rust):

// Copyright 2016 cgmath Developers
//
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, <LICENSE-APACHE or
// http://apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0> or the MIT license <LICENSE-MIT or
// http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>, at your option. This file may not be
// copied, modified, or distributed except according to those terms.

It's commonly asked whether license headers are required. I'm not comfortable making an official recommendation either way, but the Apache license recommends it in their appendix on how to use the license.

Be sure to add the relevant LICENSE-{MIT,APACHE} files. You can copy these from the Rust repo for a plain-text version.

And don't forget to update the license metadata in your Cargo.toml to:

license = "MIT OR Apache-2.0"

I'll be going through projects which agree to be relicensed and have approval by the necessary contributors and doing this changes, so feel free to leave the heavy lifting to me!

Contributor checkoff

To agree to relicensing, comment with :

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

Or, if you're a contributor, you can check the box in this repo next to your name. My scripts will pick this exact phrase up and check your checkbox, but I'll come through and manually review this issue later as well.

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emberian avatar Jan 10 '16 18:01 emberian

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

Connicpu avatar Jan 10 '16 18:01 Connicpu

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

TimNN avatar Jan 10 '16 18:01 TimNN

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

luqmana avatar Jan 10 '16 19:01 luqmana

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

simnalamburt avatar Jan 10 '16 19:01 simnalamburt

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

serpis avatar Jan 10 '16 19:01 serpis

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

erickt avatar Jan 10 '16 19:01 erickt

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

bpbp-boop avatar Jan 10 '16 19:01 bpbp-boop

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

milibopp avatar Jan 10 '16 20:01 milibopp

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

mrannanj avatar Jan 10 '16 20:01 mrannanj

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

bitshifter avatar Jan 10 '16 20:01 bitshifter

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

HeroesGrave avatar Jan 10 '16 21:01 HeroesGrave

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

brandonw avatar Jan 10 '16 21:01 brandonw

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

Ogeon avatar Jan 10 '16 22:01 Ogeon

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

sebcrozet avatar Jan 10 '16 23:01 sebcrozet

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

ryanstew avatar Jan 11 '16 00:01 ryanstew

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

jpernst avatar Jan 11 '16 01:01 jpernst

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

TyOverby avatar Jan 11 '16 01:01 TyOverby

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

JeffBelgum avatar Jan 11 '16 02:01 JeffBelgum

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

brendanzab avatar Jan 11 '16 02:01 brendanzab

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option

ghost avatar Jan 11 '16 04:01 ghost

I license past and future contributions to cgmath under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

(I'm sorry to not use the exact template, but it sounds as if I would relicense all my work, as opposed to work that I contributed to cgmath.)

neuschaefer avatar Jan 11 '16 07:01 neuschaefer

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

Darkspear7 avatar Jan 11 '16 08:01 Darkspear7

@neuschaefer I think there is zero risk of it being interpreted in that way. Thanks though!

emberian avatar Jan 11 '16 14:01 emberian

I approve the relicensing of my contributions.

bfops avatar Jan 11 '16 16:01 bfops

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

bvssvni avatar Jan 11 '16 21:01 bvssvni

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

DerekBurch avatar Jan 12 '16 00:01 DerekBurch

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

bobakker avatar Jan 12 '16 09:01 bobakker

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

rsaarelm avatar Jan 12 '16 12:01 rsaarelm

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

MaikKlein avatar Jan 12 '16 13:01 MaikKlein

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

cyndis avatar Jan 12 '16 18:01 cyndis