What license should we release our code under?

[pospi]

Seems like a good idea to get consensus on this sooner rather than later. Perhaps could be considered a short-term answer, and we revisit when the Cryptographic Autonomy License & others become available.

I get a lot of people telling me using MIT doesn't solve any problems. What alternatives are there that still allow proprietary codebases to integrate? AGPL? Please chime in (:

[bhaugen]

AGPL does not allow proprietary extensions. It's copy-left. Requires dual-licensing for proprietary code bases.

@thedavidmeister in the App Dev mattermost channel says licensing is an @artbrock question. My tendency is to go with the most common license in the software ecosystem I'm working in. Usually provides the most integration potential: no duelling licenses.

But who wants to integrate proprietary code? That might tell us something, too.

[RyanHow]

What're the issues with MIT? I work mainly with JavaScript libs and generally, it's MIT. If I see GPL I don't touch it. But that's a different ecosystem.

How do you see the code being used? Will there be zome mixins? I feel if that is the case it needs to be a more permissive license so it gives integrators some freedom in the licenses they choose.

For the industry we're going into, the more permissive the better for us. GPL licenses can be showstoppers. I know all the arguments, but some places just don't touch them, especially in situations where the GPL interpretation isn't so clear cut how it applies.

[seajones7]

For wide-spread adoption of HoloREA core, IMO, the license must be as permissive as possible - I found this discussion around the CAL interesting.

[pospi]

AGPL does not allow proprietary extensions

This could be a problem for some Holochain core infrastructure, FWIW. hc-web-client is licensed as AGPL.

What're the issues with MIT?

Honestly? No idea. I'm not a lawyer. But a lot of people will tell you that MIT protects you from precisely nothing. I suppose it depends what you want protection from.

[RyanHow]

This could be a problem for some Holochain core infrastructure, FWIW. hc-web-client is licensed as AGPL.

Yeah I've raised that one a while ago. They are planning it on changing it at some point to something more permissive, but I'm not sure what.

holochain/hc-web-client-redux#17

[thedavidmeister]

e.g.
https://medium.com/holochain/understanding-the-cryptographic-autonomy-license-172ac920966d

[cosnick]

Hey Pospi, I've been doing my best to push this forward between legal teams and Holochain in Gibraltar. There's been some progress, but it has been quite slow going. Will update you accordingly.

…

On Mon, Jun 3, 2019, 6:33 PM David Meister ***@***.***> wrote: e.g. https://medium.com/holochain/understanding-the-cryptographic-autonomy-license-172ac920966d — You are receiving this because you were assigned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AI33Y42ILWDHGIIKKXM6BPTPYTJNTANCNFSM4HOR4JPQ> .

[pospi]

My personal opinion at present is that we should go with Apache 2, given that it's more enterprise-friendly than direct GPL variants and the FSM seem to like it- https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#apache2

[thedavidmeister]

i'm unsubscribing from this because i'm not a lawyer ;)

[pospi]

For the moment I think I'm going to land on Apache 2.0, unless there are any strong objections?

…

On Sat, 27 Jul 2019 at 12:29, David Meister ***@***.***> wrote: i'm unsubscribing from this because i'm not a lawyer ;) — You are receiving this because you were assigned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AADK2JEMTPWFBYYM3YSW3Z3QBOXJJANCNFSM4HOR4JPQ> .

-- writings <http://pospi.spadgos.com/> | twitter <https://twitter.com/pospigos> | github <https://github.com/pospi> ← where to find me ValueFlows <https://www.valueflo.ws/> | HoloREA <https://github.com/holo-rea/> ← things I'm working on