Re-license go-ipfs to MIT + Apache 2 #6302

momack2 · 2019-05-06T19:01:40Z

@ianjdarrow has done some research into open-source licensing and determined that dual-licensing as MIT and Apache 2 is a best practice. Quoting from his writing elsewhere:

This has two major benefits:

There are concerns in the open source community about whether the MIT license leaves users vulnerable to patent infringement claims. We think the pure legal risk is small, but the way the open source community interacts with our project is really important. It makes sense to pick the license that makes the largest number of people comfortable.

There's now no reason to adopt a separate DCO, since the Apache-2 license grant addresses the same issue.

Why use a dual license, instead of just Apache-2? The Apache-2 license is incompatible with the GPLv2 license, which includes things like the Linux kernel. With a dual license, GPLv2 projects can just use the MIT license instead. Our goal is to make our software available to as many projects as possible, so we'd rather adopt a licensing scheme that doesn't exclude anyone.

What we need to do:

I have updated the licenses in #6301, the next step is to get an explicit OK from our current and past contributors to consent to the relicensing. To keep track of things, below is a contributor sign-off list. Contributors can either check the box next to their github handle, or comment on this issue thread with the following text:

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

Contributor sign-off:

Mikaela · 2019-05-06T19:28:13Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

(Even if I only added two words and an URL to one file in 4470b83, so I don't think my approval is very important.)

MichaelMure · 2019-05-06T19:28:41Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

lidel · 2019-05-06T20:17:42Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

dignifiedquire · 2019-05-06T20:29:21Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

torarnv · 2019-05-06T20:59:18Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

andrew · 2019-05-06T20:59:37Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

zmackie · 2019-05-06T21:01:17Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

hackergrrl · 2019-05-06T21:05:12Z

This is fine by me.

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

chriscool · 2019-05-06T21:58:47Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

rob-deutsch · 2019-05-06T23:14:27Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

wking · 2019-05-06T23:22:00Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

Although future contributions would be covered by the usual docs, right? So I don't think my commitment for future contributions matters as far as this PR goes.

marten-seemann · 2019-05-06T23:22:16Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

dirkmc · 2019-05-07T00:59:13Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

RichardLitt · 2019-05-07T01:35:50Z

Thanks, @momack2.

Can you explain why MIT is not sufficient anymore?

kpcyrd · 2019-05-07T03:21:43Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

daviddias · 2019-05-07T05:46:02Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

PS: I've updated my handle from @diasdavid to @daviddias, so my approval is valid for both handles (which I still own)

daviddias · 2019-05-07T05:46:27Z

Btw, great post explaining the Permissive License Stack

@RichardLitt ^^

Luzifer · 2019-05-07T05:59:02Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

alanshaw · 2019-05-07T06:17:49Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

lanzafame · 2019-05-07T06:18:54Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

overbool · 2019-05-07T06:33:35Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

cryptix · 2019-05-07T09:57:46Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

keks · 2019-05-07T10:02:04Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

achingbrain · 2019-05-07T11:01:23Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

eingenito · 2019-05-07T16:22:21Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

whyrusleeping · 2019-05-07T16:47:52Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

dylanPowers · 2019-05-07T16:51:35Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

kevina · 2019-05-07T17:38:38Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

Kubuxu · 2019-05-07T18:51:22Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

pfista · 2019-05-07T19:05:35Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to chose either at their option.

kulla · 2019-05-07T20:46:42Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

tv42 · 2019-05-07T22:03:23Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

kjzz · 2019-05-08T05:36:13Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

RichardLitt · 2019-05-08T14:16:37Z

Thanks, @daviddias. That was some very useful context.

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

mateon1 · 2019-05-11T00:48:49Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

PlayerWithoutName · 2019-05-11T06:10:35Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

leerspace · 2019-05-14T21:03:11Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

cboddy · 2019-05-15T14:48:55Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

mateon1 · 2019-05-16T21:28:57Z

I noticed a few recent commits still using the old sign-off messages (fa479f7, 7340eb5, ...), and some commits with no sign-off lines at all (f2d01f5, 227da14). What should be used for signing off commits from now on?

The current sign-off is:

License: MIT
Signed-off-by: {name} <{email}>

Should this be changed to License: MIT/Apache-2.0? Should sign-offs still be mandatory?

BTW, gitcop's warnings about the sign-off point to a dead link, the file the bot links is contribution-guidelines.md in the community repo, but the file is now called CONTRIBUTING.md

Stebalien · 2019-05-16T22:31:15Z

Should sign-offs still be mandatory?

Signoffs are no longer mandatory and contributions to a project automatically fall under that project's license per GitHub's terms of service (https://help.github.com/en/articles/github-terms-of-service#6-contributions-under-repository-license).

We've also killed off GitCop.

verokarhu · 2019-05-17T06:44:44Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

eminence · 2019-05-22T14:08:20Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

daviddias · 2019-10-01T14:09:36Z

Is this doc https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/blob/master/docs/developer-certificate-of-origin still necessary with the new re-licensing? In another words, can I delete it?

Stebalien · 2019-10-01T14:54:16Z

I think we should keep that. We've decided that we no longer need explicit sign-offs and technically GitHub has an automatic DCO for all contributions in the ToS but it can't hurt to keep that.

fgasperij · 2020-05-20T01:10:41Z

Why go this way instead of GPL v2?

willscott · 2020-05-20T01:28:12Z

@fgasperij see https://protocol.ai/blog/announcing-the-permissive-license-stack/

zramsay · 2022-09-27T17:53:47Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

edisonlee55 · 2023-02-25T14:19:47Z

I license past and future contributions under the dual MIT/Apache-2.0 license, allowing licensees to choose either at their option.

momack2 added this to Inbox in ipfs/go-ipfs May 9, 2019

momack2 mentioned this issue Sep 9, 2019

Proposal to update license to MIT/Apache-2 ipfs/team-mgmt#849

Open

kryptine mentioned this issue Oct 20, 2019

Add Apache 2.0 license ipfs/js-ipfs#2552

Closed

This was referenced Nov 22, 2019

License update to dual MIT and Apache 2 ipfs/js-ipfs#2620

Merged

Updated the license as mentioned in issue #1177 ipfs-inactive/js-ipfs-http-client#1179

Merged

HelloZeroNet mentioned this issue Dec 10, 2019

Contributor Agreement for License Change [Updated] HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet#2273

Open

koivunej mentioned this issue Feb 20, 2020

switch license from isc to mit/apl2.0 rs-ipfs/rust-ipfs#50

Merged

Gozala mentioned this issue Aug 12, 2020

Re-license to MIT + Apache 2 ipfs/js-dag-service#382

Open

3 tasks

aschmahmann mentioned this issue Oct 6, 2020

Repo setup ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-counter#1

Merged

Rylan12 mentioned this issue Nov 22, 2020

Update license expressions to new syntax Homebrew/homebrew-core#65442

Closed

5 tasks

MichaelMure mentioned this issue Sep 27, 2022

Is the GPL3 license too restrictive MichaelMure/git-bug#874

Open

Re-license go-ipfs to MIT + Apache 2 #6302

Re-license go-ipfs to MIT + Apache 2 #6302

Comments

momack2 commented May 6, 2019 • edited by Jorropo

What we need to do:

Contributor sign-off:

Mikaela commented May 6, 2019

MichaelMure commented May 6, 2019

lidel commented May 6, 2019

dignifiedquire commented May 6, 2019

torarnv commented May 6, 2019

andrew commented May 6, 2019

zmackie commented May 6, 2019

hackergrrl commented May 6, 2019

chriscool commented May 6, 2019

rob-deutsch commented May 6, 2019

wking commented May 6, 2019

marten-seemann commented May 6, 2019

dirkmc commented May 7, 2019

RichardLitt commented May 7, 2019

kpcyrd commented May 7, 2019

daviddias commented May 7, 2019 • edited

daviddias commented May 7, 2019

Luzifer commented May 7, 2019

alanshaw commented May 7, 2019

lanzafame commented May 7, 2019

overbool commented May 7, 2019

cryptix commented May 7, 2019

keks commented May 7, 2019

achingbrain commented May 7, 2019

eingenito commented May 7, 2019

whyrusleeping commented May 7, 2019

dylanPowers commented May 7, 2019

kevina commented May 7, 2019

Kubuxu commented May 7, 2019

pfista commented May 7, 2019

kulla commented May 7, 2019

tv42 commented May 7, 2019

kjzz commented May 8, 2019

RichardLitt commented May 8, 2019

mateon1 commented May 11, 2019

PlayerWithoutName commented May 11, 2019

leerspace commented May 14, 2019

cboddy commented May 15, 2019

mateon1 commented May 16, 2019

Stebalien commented May 16, 2019

verokarhu commented May 17, 2019

eminence commented May 22, 2019

daviddias commented Oct 1, 2019

Stebalien commented Oct 1, 2019

fgasperij commented May 20, 2020

willscott commented May 20, 2020

zramsay commented Sep 27, 2022

edisonlee55 commented Feb 25, 2023

momack2 commented May 6, 2019 •

edited by Jorropo

daviddias commented May 7, 2019 •

edited