Document licensing expectations

[schlessera]

WP-CLI is licensed under the MIT license, and all bundled code should be compatible with that.

We should document our licensing expectations for:

• accepting third-party code into the official repository/organization
• bundling third-party code
• depending on third-party code

Related: https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-config-transformer/pull/1#issuecomment-354424131

[kirtangajjar]

@schlessera I think you should add MIT license and close this issue.

[jeffpaul]

@kirtangajjar I suspect part of the problem is if third-party code is licensed differently that MIT may not apply for all scenarios.

[miya0001]

Ah, this has been on my mind for some time, I guess it has to be GPL.

Because WP-CLI is doing require WordPress and it is calling some functions of the WordPress core, connecting to WordPress database. I think it is same with the WordPress plugins and themes.

If the project depends on a project under GPL, it should be under the GPL.

I am not sure, but I am thinking so. If I am misunderstanding, I am sorry. 😊

[kirtangajjar]

Oh! My bad. I thought this issue was for licensing of the handbook itself.

Currently this repo(handbook) does not have any LICENCE file. I think I should create a separate issue for this.

[schlessera]

@miya0001 The MIT license is compatible to the GPL license. As an example, it is also accepted in the plugin repository.

The issue here is about the licensing requirements we have when new package are meant to be added under the official wp-cli organization and/or bundled with WP-CLI.