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Github is fairly aggressive these days about alerting you to put a standard license in your repository. But they still remain with the problem that most folks

Github is fairly aggressive these days about alerting you to put a standard license in your repository. But they still remain with the problem that most folks choose the user-friendly MIT (I would, and 9 out of 10 of the top projects do). This leaves them with an issue: It's not clear that contributions submitted to an MIT project grant permission to incorporate those contributions under the same terms. We understand it socially, but it's not legally explicit. Github has been trying to address this in their Terms of Service, by saying that simply by using the site, you agree that "inbound=outbound": https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#6-contributions-under-repository-license https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#6-... But the Github TOS isn't really the right place to be legislating that. For more, see: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/02/16/Against-Legislating-the-Nonobvious.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/02/16/Against-Legislatin...

carussell 9y ago
> It's not clear that contributions submitted to an MIT project grant permission to incorporate those contributions under the same terms. We understand it socially, but it's not legally explicit. Given that GitHub works only through forks and pull requests, this is not a problem. There are two repos A and B published under the MIT License. There is no need to address what happens when the contributor behind B sends you a pull request. (There is no need for contributor who published B to even send you a pull request; in theory, you could "reach over" and start incorporating anything from B into A without any participation from the person behind B—just like you [probably] did with all your vendored libraries.) Worrying about this is one of the cargo cultiest memes, second only to all the videos on YouTube who think they're protected by a notice that says, "I don't claim ownership of this video; all rights belong to X".

carussell 9y ago

> It's not clear that contributions submitted to an MIT project grant permission to incorporate those contributions under the same terms. We understand it socially, but it's not legally explicit. Given that GitHub works only through forks and pull requests, this is not a problem. There are two repos A and B published under the MIT License. There is no need to address what happens when the contributor behind B sends you a pull request. (There is no need for contributor who published B to even send you a pull request; in theory, you could "reach over" and start incorporating anything from B into A without any participation from the person behind B—just like you [probably] did with all your vendored libraries.) Worrying about this is one of the cargo cultiest memes, second only to all the videos on YouTube who think they're protected by a notice that says, "I don't claim ownership of this video; all rights belong to X".