BiscuIT licence
Currently, BiscuIT and all official apps are licenced under the MIT licence.
There are reasons not to do so and instead choose a more restrictive licence. These reasons do include the wish to ensure that noone draws material benefits from modifications to the BiscuIT source code. Also, some contributors might want their work protected better than MIT guarantees.
The following aspects need to be ensured in any case and/or must be taken into account:
- Users of BiscuIT are mostly public and private schools
- BiscuIT is provided as SaaS by schools, cities, or private companies
- Contributors include minors (students) and minors must always be welcomed as contributors
- Third parties must be enabled to provide apps (modules) for BiscuIT
- Third parties must be enabled to provide operation or support for BiscuIT
I will propose some licences with some remarks. Please consider the aspects mentioned above and possible other aspects and comment pros and cons for the respective licences.
Activity
added workflow::discussing label
GNU General Public Licence
Pros:
- Good protection against modifications not given back as modifications
Cons:
- Copyleft
- No protection when used as SaaS
- Restricts implementation of plugins and extensions to the same licence (“strong copyleft”)
- Choosing the version used can have implications on reuse
Edited by mirabilos-
GNU Affero General Public Licence
Pros:
- Same protection as GPL, plus protection in SaaS environment
Cons:
- Hard to implement
- Makes operating BiscuIT unnecessarily hard
- Restricts implementation of plugins and extensions to the same licence (“strong copyleft”)
- Cannot be used with {,L}GPLv2.0-only code at all
Edited by mirabilos -
European Union Public Licence
Pros:
- Same protection as AGPL
- SaaS protections are easier to implement than in AGPL
- Has the benefits of LGPL - it is a good mix of AGPL and LGPL
- Available officially in multiple languages
- Good protection for users and contributors inside the EU
- Also handles questions like place of jurisdiction as additional protection for contributors
Cons:
- Not widely used
- Virtually unknown in most regular FOSS circles
Readups on EUPL:
Edited by mirabilos assigned to @mirabilos
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The MirOS Licence
Pros:
- Same as MIT
- Also includes non-software works
- Disclaimer suited to fit EU law better than most (close to EUPL)
Cons:
- Not widely used
Edited by Nik | Klampfradler GNU Library General Public Licence, version 2.0 or later
Pros:
- Good protection against modifications not given back as modifications
- Allows implementations of plugins and extensions, or reuse of clearly separated parts, without restricting the licence of the other work
Cons:
- Copyleft
- No protection when used as SaaS
“Also, some contributors might”… I’d say let these contributors speak up for themselves and not act prematurely.
Personally, I could envision an LGPLv2.0+/M{IT|irBSD}¹ mix, in which the whole-project licence is LGPLv2.0+ but individual components (perhaps even including the core) are more Free. This should ensure maximum adaptability with extensions of all kinds except for incompatible strong copyleft ones, and not encumber any service providers.
For non-code, has there been any mention of needing copyleft protection at all? Most licences aren’t suited for non-code (except MirBSD), but I really would prefer to avoid any and all CC licences (except CC0, but that’s not really a work licence anyway).
① choose or dual-licence, it does not matter all that much for code between these two M-initialled licences
assigned to @nik and unassigned @mirabilos
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@mirabilos Can you please comment reasonably on EUPL? Right now, it looks like you downvoted it "because".
Also, this issue was created because potential contributors did speak up.
Edited by Nik | Klampfradler I downvoted it for two reasons: “Same protection as AGPL“ is one, and that it’s virtually unknown in most FOSS circles is the other. I’ve encountered tons of licences during licence analysēs for various fields of endeavour / ecosystems (C, PHP, Perl, Python, Java™, JavaScript, …) but never even once encountered an EUPL work; even CeCILL showed up at least once. So few would know what to do with it or what it would mean for them to use, copy, modify, or even contribute; it’s a big turnoff.
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I entirely object to this.
A quick Google search suggests that 100% of all software licenced under The MirOS Licence was written either by you or me (or both). It is therefore questionnable why your argumentation, even if it were true for EUPL, wouldn't also hold for The MirOS Licence, which you upvoted and propose. (The EUPL, on the other hand, is used in at least one big software product that was not written by the EU, namely SoapUI).
While I see where you are going with your argumentation, I think it contradicts the LGPL and/or MIT/MirOS mix even more. Your argumentation assumes that the majority of contributors are people who are savvy about licences and thus prefer a well-known licence because they know it and it is widely used. I do not think this assumption is good - we should welcome contributors who have absolutely no knowledge about such boring things as licences, and probably we should welcome them even more. WIth that in mind, the EUPL is a good thing because it tears down the language barrier when reading the licence, because it is officially available in a wide range of languages. It is also written in quite easy words compared to other licences, making it easier to understand the consequences of the EUPL than of any GPL licence.
I found https://github.com/nyantec/rfc2253-rust and https://github.com/nyantec/sensorlog and don’t know who Paul Asmuth is, but yes, the “rarely used outside” argument is valid for MirBSD just as much as for EUPL.
With author’s bias, I’m allowed to vote one up and the other down, though. ☻
More objectively, EUPL’s one other project SoapUI is larger and more widespread than those under The MirOS Licence, but on the other hand, it’s almost not encountered in FOSS circles or ecosystems, while almost everyone has mksh in their pocket or car radio, with people even translating the licence into French. (There’s also a German translation on the website. The downside is that, with MirBSD, the translations are unofficial, not binding. On the flip side, however, the licence is easy enough to understand that that’s not a problem in reality.)
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Will be discussed at 'the non-technical BiscuIT meeting": https://cloud.teckids.org/apps/polls/poll/Qe26hd0DNspb1UMy