dual-licence question

[jeff-h]

Would you consider releasing LESS under GPL v2 (or something compatible with it, such as MIT), as well as the existing Apache 2?

The three big open source CMS's — WordPress, Joomla and Drupal — are all GPL2 only and thus can't incorporate this library easily, instead requiring users to manually come to github or http://lesscss.org and download it, and install it separately, which ultimately reduces adoption.

[lukeapage]

ideally we would recommend people use less.js serverside, not browserside... and this suggestion is to enable more people to use it browser side?

[Soviut]

True, if all you're using is the result of LESS, then license be damned. There are some advantages to using LESS in the browser when it comes to hosted environments, especially the ones that basically force you to edit your CSS directly online via an editor panel.

The GPL really does make things difficult for everyone, doesn't it?

[lukeapage]

I think @cloudhead would have to comment on this...

[jeff-h]

To clarify, no, this request is actually not talking about using it client side in the usual fashion. Sorry for the ambiguity.

In my particular case, I'm writing a Drupal module which needs to create & compile LESS into CSS client-side, after first page load, to power a browser-based theming tool (see http://drupal.org/project/livethemer). After the design is completed client-side, it'll be sent back to the server and compiled once using Leafo's lessphp server-side, and cached on the server from that point on.

I guess another use-case for a GPL2-friendlier license would be packaging a bunch of code together which runs less.js on node.js (all on the server) to help power one of the CMS's I mentioned, but I admit that's probably a less common scenario.

It's true I could have the Drupal module include less.js from a centrally-hosted copy (on my own server) but it would be much nicer to be able to include it in the Drupal module package so everyone has their own copy locally.

[Rarst]

The three big open source CMS's — WordPress, Joomla and Drupal — are all GPL2 only

For the record WordPress is GPLv2 or later, you can do compatible extensions for it under GPLv3 that can include Apache License 2.0.

But I concur that MIT goes much easier with GPL stuff.

[hswong3i]

I am also coming from Drupal and would like to suggest dual license with MIT, or even re-license into MIT as like as that of bootstrap (twbs/bootstrap@cb40a2e).

I would like to reference the complete discussion of bootstrap in here (twbs/bootstrap#2054) as your reference.

[cloudhead]

If this is still a major issue, dual-licensing with MIT is ok with me.

[hswong3i]

At least from a Drupal contributor point of view, Apache license must be a issue when we hope to contribute code to drupal.org GPL-only GIT repository (which we had already try to encourage ppl switch to GPLv3 for more than 2 years but not success).

In case we can dual-licensing with Apache + MIT, the problem will be solved automatically.

P.S. as your reference that the corresponding Drupal module for integrating less.js already completed (https://drupal.org/project/twbs_less); BTW, I can't submit less.js URL to drupal.org packaging whitelist (https://drupal.org/packaging-whitelist?title=less) since it is now under Apache license ;-(

P.P.S. Drupal.org Library Packaging Whitelist request for including less.js is now submitted, too.

[lukeapage]

Would we need to get a CLA signed by all contributors? or is it something we can just declare?

[Rarst]

Without prior agreement every contributor needs to agree to license change or their contributions need to be reverted and re-done. That's what took Bootstrap so long to deal with.

[jonschlinkert]

every contributor needs to agree

All that is required is a simple "yes". So you have mine at least, yes.

[hswong3i]

From twbs/bootstrap#2054 (comment)

FYI .. the doctrine project used this tool here to handle the migration from LGPL to MIT:
https://github.com/beberlei/license-manager

[hswong3i]

I give some try to installation https://github.com/beberlei/license-manager on my local testbed and able to create a license switch project for less.js as below screenshot.

If this tool looks good enough I will able to give a hand for install it under a public accessible domain name.

Any idea?

[lukeapage]

well we don't want to move to MIT, we want to dual-license right?
What back-end does this tool go against? whats the easiest option - is it possible to get it running using gh pages only and presumably some free online database?