Sphinxify licensing

[jasongrout]

I was tracking down the history of the sphinxify licensing to clarify how this sphinxify module is BSD while the core Sage sphinxify is currently GPLv2+. Here is what I found:

• The sphinxify module was originally created in the Sage Notebook project in 2009 by @TimDumol under the BSD license: sagemath/sagenb@4d96e4e#diff-54bafdf5f646af032e48b2e64247d69897aa002b1e039b3984a0d281c08c9ab0. From the commit diff, it appears to have replaced disabled code that called sphinx. See also https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/7000. Even though the Sage Notebook was under a GPL license, the sphinxify file itself was BSD-licensed.
• Sphinxify gradually evolved in the Sage Notebook codebase, and the file continued to be licensed BSD (https://github.com/sagemath/sagenb/commits/9d04f4bdb6e02bd3e227131b80d5eaf10f09721a/sagenb/misc/sphinxify.py)
• In 2015, @ccordoba12 started what would become the docrepr project and seems to have forked this BSD-licensed sphinxify module: 37f2557#diff-47a8d80ad1d3db4de64b36827a03d3928ba6982bebcc4ea229adce0a3d1c88ad
• So now we have two parallel tracks for sphinxify, one in docrepr and one in Sage.
  • Sage: Sphinxify develops further, and in 2016, @jdemeyer forks sphinxify again to create a new version in core Sage: sagemath/sage@4b206a2#diff-39449f5fec48847286e6bd557d5c4fba2ac5051d7ed3f5b38cb4ac95cdf70d27
    • Sage Notebook: The original sphinxify module continues to develop in Sage Notebook (https://github.com/sagemath/sagenb/commits/master/sagenb/misc/sphinxify.py), and in 2019, is deleted and replaced with an import of the core Sage version (sagemath/sagenb@9d04f4b#diff-54bafdf5f646af032e48b2e64247d69897aa002b1e039b3984a0d281c08c9ab0)
    • Core Sage: The core Sage sphinxify module continues to develop (https://github.com/sagemath/sage/commits/develop/src/sage/misc/sphinxify.py), and in 2018 is relicensed to GPLv2+ with Tim's permission for consistency with the rest of Sage (https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/26453)
  • Docrepr: In Carlos' project, sphinxify continues to be developed as a BSD-licensed module, with its history transitioning over several file renamings. The history of the current file is https://github.com/spyder-ide/docrepr/commits/master/docrepr/sphinxify.py

I don't think there is anything to do and this ticket can be closed immediately, but I just wanted to document the history to prevent confusion.

Personal side note: If I recall correctly, I remember having a conversation about the BSD license on the original sphinxify module at SageDays 19 with Tim and a few others, where we decided it would be fine to have a BSD-licensed file in the Sage Notebook codebase, but that we'd just make sure that file explicitly stated it had the BSD license

[CAM-Gerlach]

Thanks for the very detailed breakdown, @jasongrout !

@ccordoba12 Might be a good idea to add a brief note to the License section of the Readme summarizing this as it directly relates to docrepr and linking here for more information, if @jasongrout wants to submit a PR...but I leave that up to you.

[SylvainCorlay]

Should we close this then?

[CAM-Gerlach]

I was going to add a mention and a link to this in the Readme in #37

[ccordoba12]

Sorry for chiming in so late here, but I'd like to thank @jasongrout for clarifying the licensing situation of this project.

I'd also like to add a bit more context to this part

In 2015, @ccordoba12 started what would become the docrepr project and seems to have forked this BSD-licensed sphinxify module: 37f2557#diff-47a8d80ad1d3db4de64b36827a03d3928ba6982bebcc4ea229adce0a3d1c88ad

Actually, docrepr started as an effort to create an independent project out of the code that powers Spyder's Help pane, so others can be benefit from it. Furthermore, I was the one that created that functionality, which also happens to be my first contribution to Spyder back in 2010.

I found about sphinxify at that time when looking for simple libraries that allowed to make webpages out of docstrings on the fly. As @jasongrout mentioned, the license back then was BSD. Since afterwards I didn't merge back changes from Sage's sphinxify, there shouldn't be an issue with that.

This is also why the first version of sphinxify here is a modified one of the original sphinxify in Sage. And there's another version that still lives in Spyder:

https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder/blob/master/spyder/plugins/help/utils/sphinxify.py

One day we hope to integrate this project with Spyder as well.