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One of the primary beefs from the person filing the issue seems to be that the project in question (google-cloud-gemserver) is not also licensed as MIT: > As I

One of the primary beefs from the person filing the issue seems to be that the project in question (google-cloud-gemserver) is not also licensed as MIT: > As I'm sure you're aware, the MIT license [...] does not allow you to change the license. This demonstrates a poor understanding of licensing. The MIT license is a permissive license, not a reciprocal ("viral") one. I.e., you're free to incorporate it into other projects even when those projects themselves are not licensed as MIT. This wouldn't look so silly if it weren't the case that: 1. The MIT license text's brevity is very to-the-point 2. It goes further than similar licenses (e.g., ISC, BSD) and explicitly names sublicensing when enumerating its (inexhaustive) list of permissable uses 3. The other software project in question is licensed under Apache License version 2.0, which is more or less functionally equivalent to MIT, modulo some patent termination stuff. EDIT to everyone commenting about "relicensed MIT files", and "changing the license": Stop that. If you mean that it's required to reproduce the text of the license and the copyright notice somewhere in the end result (a la Firefox's about:license), then say that. This conversation would go a lot smoother that way instead of you endlessly repeating about a "license change". Say what you mean.

steveklabnik 9y ago
> This demonstrates a poor understanding of licensing. It doesn't; while the MIT is a permissive license, that doesn't mean that it lets you change the license. > you're free to incorporate it into other projects even when those projects themselves are not licensed as MIT. This is true, but you still have to follow its terms, just like any other license. (I have not actually looked at the repo or investigated the details in this specific case.)
- carussell 9y ago
  I don't know what "MIT [doesn't let] you change the license" is supposed to mean. The original project is licensed under MIT. The Google project said to incorporate that code is licensed under Apache 2.0. This is permitted by the terms of the MIT license. If there is any wrongdoing here, it looks like a failure to `git add ./NOTICES.txt`, and that's as simple as the remedy to it would be, too.
  - masklinn 9y ago
    The problem is not that the project is Apache licensed, it's that (according to TFA anyway) the project relicensed MIT files as Apache 2 and removed attribution, both of which are verboten. You can have MIT-licensed files in an Apache-licensed project, you can not strip out their original licenses and put yours instead.
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  - icebraining 9y ago
    Licenses aren't per project, they are for any copyrightable piece of code, you can have multiple even inside a single file. MIT lets you mix with Apache licensed code, but you still have to indicate the original license.
  - steveklabnik 9y ago
    > I don't know what "MIT [doesn't let] you change the license" is supposed to mean. You cannot take code licensed under MIT, delete the MIT license, and supply a different license instead. > This is permitted by the terms of the MIT license. It is permitted to include MIT licensed code in a project that also contains Apache licensed code, but it is not permitted to change the MIT licensed code to be Apache licensed. The result is a project where different code has different licensing.
geofft 9y ago
No, OP is correct here (assuming the project includes source from gemstash, as opposed to merely being something that links gemstash at runtime). You can certainly reuse code under the MIT license in an Apache-licensed project, but the license states clearly: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. That is, you cannot remove the copyright notice nor the text of the MIT license. (Yes, this is a very easy thing to fix.)
rocqua 9y ago
The MIT license still requires that the MIT license be distributed in anything using that license. That includes the list of all copyright holders that contributed to the MIT licensed code. Quoting from the license: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. So if this was a fork, the MIT license was violated.
masklinn 9y ago
> The MIT license is a permissive license, not a reciprocal ("viral") one. I.e., you're free to incorporate it into other projects even when those projects themselves are not licensed as MIT. Sure but you are not allowed to relicense it nilly willy, only the copyright holder can do that (which incidentally is part of the reason for the copyright assignment of the FSF of big projects).
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steveklabnik 9y ago

> This demonstrates a poor understanding of licensing. It doesn't; while the MIT is a permissive license, that doesn't mean that it lets you change the license. > you're free to incorporate it into other projects even when those projects themselves are not licensed as MIT. This is true, but you still have to follow its terms, just like any other license. (I have not actually looked at the repo or investigated the details in this specific case.)

carussell 9y ago
I don't know what "MIT [doesn't let] you change the license" is supposed to mean. The original project is licensed under MIT. The Google project said to incorporate that code is licensed under Apache 2.0. This is permitted by the terms of the MIT license. If there is any wrongdoing here, it looks like a failure to `git add ./NOTICES.txt`, and that's as simple as the remedy to it would be, too.
- masklinn 9y ago
  The problem is not that the project is Apache licensed, it's that (according to TFA anyway) the project relicensed MIT files as Apache 2 and removed attribution, both of which are verboten. You can have MIT-licensed files in an Apache-licensed project, you can not strip out their original licenses and put yours instead.
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- icebraining 9y ago
  Licenses aren't per project, they are for any copyrightable piece of code, you can have multiple even inside a single file. MIT lets you mix with Apache licensed code, but you still have to indicate the original license.
- steveklabnik 9y ago
  > I don't know what "MIT [doesn't let] you change the license" is supposed to mean. You cannot take code licensed under MIT, delete the MIT license, and supply a different license instead. > This is permitted by the terms of the MIT license. It is permitted to include MIT licensed code in a project that also contains Apache licensed code, but it is not permitted to change the MIT licensed code to be Apache licensed. The result is a project where different code has different licensing.

geofft 9y ago

No, OP is correct here (assuming the project includes source from gemstash, as opposed to merely being something that links gemstash at runtime). You can certainly reuse code under the MIT license in an Apache-licensed project, but the license states clearly: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. That is, you cannot remove the copyright notice nor the text of the MIT license. (Yes, this is a very easy thing to fix.)

rocqua 9y ago

The MIT license still requires that the MIT license be distributed in anything using that license. That includes the list of all copyright holders that contributed to the MIT licensed code. Quoting from the license: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. So if this was a fork, the MIT license was violated.

masklinn 9y ago

> The MIT license is a permissive license, not a reciprocal ("viral") one. I.e., you're free to incorporate it into other projects even when those projects themselves are not licensed as MIT. Sure but you are not allowed to relicense it nilly willy, only the copyright holder can do that (which incidentally is part of the reason for the copyright assignment of the FSF of big projects).

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