Licencing Request

[Ralim]

Hia,

Going to use this to close #33.

Need to select a code licence to make code re-use easier.

Options I see as most likely to be selected:

1. GPLv3
2. GPLv2
3. MIT
4. Apache 2.0

This will only apply to find that are not the firmware/ and Device Documentation/ paths as these are under their own licence (or unknown as for the firmware).

I generally lean MIT or GPLv2/3. But I'm also happy to also do GPLv2-or-later.

I would like to ping all the past contributors (sorry for noise, feel free to unsubscribe if you want).

Please react thumbs up if your okay with any open source licence option.
Please comment if you have any preference or requirements.

@TRaMeLL
@ia
@River-Mochi
@pnppl
@MJerich
@discip

Sadly I cannot contact those whom have deleted their account since contributing boot-logos 😢

[pnppl]

My preference would be GPL 2-or-later for copyleft+compatibility.

[ia]

Hello. Obviously the more people asked, the more varieties of opinions they may have.

My own humble opinion - I fully agree with the first comment here: I "vote" for GPLv3, because it luckily covers IronOS already, and definitely copyleft is better: we see how companies produce hardware which is supported by third party communities, but those companies do not share anything with such communities about their software, firmware (like init code), hardware (like specifications & datasheets) anymore, nor providing any support! But since for every action there is a reaction, I would say that copyleft is the only legal way to take at least some kind of reaction on this field by not giving a single chance or more opportunity to close more sources & software/hardware.

Pardon me if it sounds too "radical", but just sharing my thoughts on that.

[acuteaangle]

I'm not a contributor, but I personally favour GPL-2.0-or-later in this case.
Normally my choice would be GPL-3.0-or-later; however, PineFlash is GPL-2.0-only and cannot make use of anything here if it's GPL-3.0-*.

I'm not sure how well a software license applies to the boot logo images themselves, as it may be unclear what the 'source form' is. I suppose it's arguable that the images in this repo are the 'source form', as opposed to the format that is flashed to the device, but I'm not a lawyer.

[ia]

how well a software license applies to the boot logo images themselves, as it may be unclear what the 'source form' is. I suppose it's arguable that the images in this repo are the 'source form', as opposed to the format that is flashed to the device, but I'm not a lawyer.

This is a very interesting moment... well, as of for logos, whether it's png or binary, I would put one of those CC licenses, CC BY-NC-SA in particular.

[acuteaangle]

Note: The CC Noncommercial licenses are not considered libre software. (I’m aware the OP specified ‘open source’, but I’m not certain how to interpret that in the context of media.)

I’m recording the distinction because I don’t think it would be a correct assumption that everyone who indicated being willing to license their contributions under ‘any open source license’ would automatically include NC.

Additional thought: I’m not a lawyer, and don’t know if using a soldering iron for commercial purposes with a boot logo configured would count as ‘commercial use’ of the logo file?

[ia]

I’m recording the distinction because I don’t think it would be a correct assumption that everyone who indicated being willing to license their contributions under ‘any open source license’ would automatically include NC.

You're fully correct, so technically to avoid any problems with this in the future, it seems there must be mandatory question to anyone who is committing a logo, which license an author is putting on the work.

Additional thought: I’m not a lawyer, and don’t know if using a soldering iron for commercial purposes with a boot logo configured would count as ‘commercial use’ of the logo file?

Now, that is a way much more tricky & complicated question, I'm not a lawyer either, so ... I have no idea. As far as I understand, in most of such cases developers & users just have a hope that "it won't come to that". 😓

[Ralim]

At the least we all seem to be on the same page then.
Normally I'm all for GPLv3-or-later and its annoying that PineFlash is GPLv2.

I'm happy to go with GPLv2-or-later for the code.

I would suspect the images would be the source. I don't think we can ever be 100% on how that would be read though.

Would be doing GPLv2-or-later be acceptable?

[Ralim]

As no one has raised any complaints I'll open a PR shortly to licence as GPLv2-or-later