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Ask HN: When vendoring for an OSS project, how do you handle licenses?
This question seems almost too simplistic to ask, but I wanted to check with HN what the current best practice was.
The context: I'm considering vendoring a couple of dependencies, both under the MIT License, in a project I intend to also publish under the MIT License.
One of the requirements of the MIT License is that the original licenses must be preserved and accompany all copies. Is it sufficient if I preserve them within the src/vendor/ folder? Or do I need to concatenate both their licenses to the LICENSE file in the root folder of my project?
I intend to deliver this project as a source download only, if that makes a difference.
Finally, how do people who vendor projects with different (and perhaps incompatible) licenses deal with it?
- nvader 11y agoTo add further information to my own question: it would appear that the kubernetes project performs this a third way. The top-level license file is their own Apache license, but their GODEPS folder contains a file, LICENSES, that is very long, and built up by concatenating all the licenses of their source projects. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/master/Godeps/LICENSES https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/mast...
- nvader 11y agoOne last comment and I'll stop talking to myself[0]. But that LICENSES file is so long, it just scrolls and scrolls! [0] Not a promise.
- pink_dinner 11y agoJust AAron Swartz it: don't follow the license at all and do what you want.