License

[Legorooj]

Which license shall we use? I'd suggest either MIT or LGPL. (We can't use GPL; we need (some) of these hooks to go within bundled pyinstaller packages.)

[htgoebel]

Summary

• all hooks shall be GPL-2.0-or-later
• new run-time hooks shall become Apache-2.0
• existing run-time hooks are "GPL-2.0-or-later WITH Bootloader-exception"
  • I'm going to ask the authors whether a license change is okay.

---

All hooks which are now part of PyInstaller are "GPL-2.0-or-later WITH Bootloader-exception" and need to keep this licence - except the author(s) of the respective hooks agree to a license change. The hooks within this repo are just build-tools and will not become part of any frozen application (except run-time hooks, see below), thus the exact licence of the hooks does not matter for the frozen application.

So for this repo I suggest to either keep "GPL-2.0-or-later WITH Bootloader-exception" or specify it more precisely.

With "more precisely" I mean: Strictly speaking the "Bootloader-exception" only applies to the bootloader, not the run-time hooks, which go into the frozen package. We might need a new license which states this.

For the runtime-hooks I suggest to port the principle of the "Bootloader-exception" to the run-time hooks: to be used without restrictions even in your proprietary program. Reading the GPL FAQ, I suggest to use the Apache License 2.0 for the run-time hooks:

Rational:

• Creating a new licence is to much effort.
• LGPL is not appropriate: Section 4 for the LGPL requires the application to include a copy of the LGPL licence and to enable the user to replace the LGPL-ed code (the run-time hook) by a different (modified) version of that code. This is neither practical nor what the "Bootloader-exception" means.
• The FSE recommends using APL for short works, which terms to prevent contributors and distributors from suing for patent infringement.

@matysek @rasky @bjones1 Comments?

[Legorooj]

Good suggestion. GPL+APL sounds good.

[matysek]

I am ok with using Apache License for runtime hooks and change license for existing runtime hooks.

[bjones1]

Sounds good to me.

[Legorooj]

@htgoebel are these headers alright?

Standard hook header

# ------------------------------------------------------------------
# Copyright (c) 2020 PyInstaller Development Team.
#
# This file is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
# License (version 2.0 or later).
#
# The full license is available in LICENSE.GPL.txt, distributed with
# this software. 
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
# ------------------------------------------------------------------

I've not bothered with WITH bootloader exception; these files aren't and never were the bootloader, so technically (legally) they are already under the standard GPL-2.

Runtime hook header:

# ------------------------------------------------------------------
# Copyright (c) 2020 PyInstaller Development Team.
#
# This file is distributed under the terms of the Apache License 2.0
#
# The full license is available in LICENSE.APL.txt, distributed with
# this software.
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
# ------------------------------------------------------------------

License files:

• LICENSE.GPL.txt - A full copy of the standard GPL-2.
• LICENSE.APL.txt - The text pointed out by Apache in the license (at the bottom): https://choosealicense.com/licenses/apache-2.0/

[htgoebel]

I commented on #2.

[Legorooj]

Dealt with in #2. We still need to contact people for rthooks though.