4 ms·

WinGet is open source under the MIT License, which I believe keeps them in the clear: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli https://github.com/microsoft/winge

WinGet is open source under the MIT License, which I believe keeps them in the clear: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli. In practice, I've never heard of any legal problems when a derivative project is also open source under a similar license. (Yes, the licenses are different. But I also believe they are considerable compatible.)

rectang 6y ago
No, that's wrong. You can't just slap a new license on top of code you've copied — that's illegal! You have to adhere to the terms of the copyright license granted in this case by upstream License. If you do not, you lose the copyright license and the ability to redistribute under any terms. Maybe you're thinking of license subsumption? That's when (say) a project under a more restrictive license (e.g. Apache License 2.0) bundles a dependency which is under a more permissive license (e.g. MIT), yet the package is advertised as being under "Apache License 2.0" even though the licensing is polyglot. But even under subsumption, you still don't get to do things like removing copyright notices or declaring unilaterally that somebody else's work is now under some new license they didn't grant. The license headers in the bundled dependency's source files don't get modified, it's just that you summarize the terms of the complete package because fulfilling the terms of the ALv2 suffices to fulfill the terms of the MIT license. (Sort of. License subsumption is a complicated issue.)
- scott_s 6y ago
  As I said, I'm unaware of any actual projects getting into trouble in a situation like this, as the licenses are mostly compatible. Are you?
  - rectang 6y ago
    Yes. Plenty of projects have gotten "in trouble" for copying code and illegally changing the license, either inadvertently or deliberately. The punishment is generally a complaint, and the remedy is that they fix the attribution. Examples: - https://github.com/Lutando/Akkatecture/issues/19 https://github.com/Lutando/Akkatecture/issues/19 - https://github.com/Grover-c13/PokeGOAPI-Java/issues/490 https://github.com/Grover-c13/PokeGOAPI-Java/issues/490 - https://github.com/dsiguide/dsiguide.github.io/issues/14 https://github.com/dsiguide/dsiguide.github.io/issues/14 Such problems do not end up in court for two reasons. First, it costs very little to bring a project into compliance with a permissive license — all you need to do is give attribution. It's not like GPL enforcement, where you have to choose whether to open source your proprietary code or to purge the GPL'd code from the project in order to achieve compliance. Second, the culture of permissively licensed open source communities is such that they don't generally want to foster a litigious environment which would frighten business users.
    - scott_s 6y ago
      If your point is that all they need to do is make the appropriate attribution, then we're in agreement.

rectang 6y ago

No, that's wrong. You can't just slap a new license on top of code you've copied — that's illegal! You have to adhere to the terms of the copyright license granted in this case by upstream License. If you do not, you lose the copyright license and the ability to redistribute under any terms. Maybe you're thinking of license subsumption? That's when (say) a project under a more restrictive license (e.g. Apache License 2.0) bundles a dependency which is under a more permissive license (e.g. MIT), yet the package is advertised as being under "Apache License 2.0" even though the licensing is polyglot. But even under subsumption, you still don't get to do things like removing copyright notices or declaring unilaterally that somebody else's work is now under some new license they didn't grant. The license headers in the bundled dependency's source files don't get modified, it's just that you summarize the terms of the complete package because fulfilling the terms of the ALv2 suffices to fulfill the terms of the MIT license. (Sort of. License subsumption is a complicated issue.)

scott_s 6y ago
As I said, I'm unaware of any actual projects getting into trouble in a situation like this, as the licenses are mostly compatible. Are you?
- rectang 6y ago
  Yes. Plenty of projects have gotten "in trouble" for copying code and illegally changing the license, either inadvertently or deliberately. The punishment is generally a complaint, and the remedy is that they fix the attribution. Examples: - https://github.com/Lutando/Akkatecture/issues/19 https://github.com/Lutando/Akkatecture/issues/19 - https://github.com/Grover-c13/PokeGOAPI-Java/issues/490 https://github.com/Grover-c13/PokeGOAPI-Java/issues/490 - https://github.com/dsiguide/dsiguide.github.io/issues/14 https://github.com/dsiguide/dsiguide.github.io/issues/14 Such problems do not end up in court for two reasons. First, it costs very little to bring a project into compliance with a permissive license — all you need to do is give attribution. It's not like GPL enforcement, where you have to choose whether to open source your proprietary code or to purge the GPL'd code from the project in order to achieve compliance. Second, the culture of permissively licensed open source communities is such that they don't generally want to foster a litigious environment which would frighten business users.
  - scott_s 6y ago
    If your point is that all they need to do is make the appropriate attribution, then we're in agreement.