New version: ForneyLab v0.11.3

[JuliaRegistrator]

• Registering package: ForneyLab
• Repository: https://github.com/biaslab/ForneyLab.jl
• Created by: @albertpod
• Version: v0.11.3
• Commit: 5d9110e0d9d942cbe9e151a19cf5cb147d677840
• Reviewed by: @albertpod
• Reference: biaslab/ForneyLab.jl@5d9110e#commitcomment-53835091

[github-actions]

Your new version pull request met all of the guidelines for auto-merging and is scheduled to be merged in the next round.

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If you want to prevent this pull request from being auto-merged, simply leave a comment. If you want to post a comment without blocking auto-merging, you must include the text [noblock] in your comment.

[albertpod]

Could you please merge this PR manually. We have theLicence.mdfile, however, the bot doesn't recognize it.
The previous PR#40345 can be removed.

[simeonschaub]

This license seems quite restrictive and is certainly not OSI-approved. See https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General#registering-a-package-in-general.

[albertpod]

@simeonschaub this package exists with this license for quite some time and there was no issue previously.

[simeonschaub]

Yes, you are free to license your own work however you want and it is great that you want to make it available to other people! Please understand though that the General registry is maintained by the community and is meant for open-source packages. Since the Julia community does not have the resources to double-check the legal implications of every license out there, this means that only licenses approved by the OSI are accepted in the General registry.

[bvdmitri]

@simeonschaub Thanks for helping us. This package exists in Julia registry for years already and initially has been registered in 2018. This is just a minor release to bump [compat] section to be compatible with new versions of other packages. The package is well known by the Bayesian inference community and we also presented it on JuliaCon. How should we proceed and why our license became an issue only now? We would prefer to keep things as they are and we do not really want to change our license for a minor fix.

[giordano]

How should we proceed

If you're unwilling to change the license to have an OSI-approved one, we won't accept any new versions. At the moment we don't plan to remove from the registry packages which don't comply with this rule, but this may change in the future.

why our license became an issue only now?

Because we started actually checking the license only recently: https://discourse.julialang.org/t/fyi-the-general-registry-now-checks-for-an-osi-approved-software-license-when-registering-new-packages-and-new-versions/57018. As explained there, the rule is actually very old but we never automatically enforced it until recently.

[DilumAluthge]

I notice that some newer packages from your group (e.g. https://github.com/biaslab/ReactiveMP.jl/blob/master/LICENSE) have the MIT license.

Would you be willing to also re-license this package under the MIT license?

[DilumAluthge]

As explained there, the rule is actually very old but we never automatically enforced it until recently.

To elaborate on this, this rule goes back to the days of METADATA.jl (the precursor to General). It was originally added in JuliaLang/METADATA.jl#3788 in October 2015.

[bvdmitri]

Hey @DilumAluthge, thanks for these links! We are discussing possible solutions and will return to this PR later.

[bvdmitri]

@DilumAluthge @simeonschaub @giordano
Thanks for your help!
We have changed the license for the package and all checks have passed. Could you please manually merge this PR?

[giordano]

Great, thanks!

[DilumAluthge]

Thank you @bvdmitri and everyone that helped out in this thread!