> The original license that accounts for most of the code you are concerned with was released with an MIT license. I'm not sure this is true. Yes, it's in the

> The original license that accounts for most of the code you are concerned with was released with an MIT license. I'm not sure this is true. Yes, it's in the git history. However, the repo was only made public on Aug. 10, which is the day the license was changed to the proprietary one. That says to me that the intent of the authors was to release the code under the proprietary license. There may have been some internal discussion of releasing it under the MIT license, which is why it had that license file for a long time in the git history, but the day the repo was actually released to the public, it was licensed using the Aug. 10 proprietery license. > This kind of misunderstanding and fear-based approach to reusing code is what holds back progress... Fully agree with this. > ...and seems to be what the authors actively tried to fight by releasing the current repo with a CreativeML Open RAIL-M license. But disagree with this. That license is a nightmare. It's full of permissive provisions followed by insane, idealistic, overreaching conditions that amount to "ensure nobody you give this to uses it to do anything bad". > I believe the intent of the authors is as important as the exact text of the repository. Yes, I agree, which is why I think it's important that the day the repo was released to the public was the same day they changed the license from MIT to the proprietary one. I think they panicked last second and decided they weren't ready to go full FOSS and switch to proprietary while they worked out (what they though was) a better solution. And on Aug 22 they relicensed with the CreativeML license. I'm sure there's disagreement and discussion going on internally, but I'm not getting the same impression from it all that you seem to be getting. I think if the FOSS people on the inside were winning, the thing would have been made public with an MIT license. Instead we've got this do-no-evil license that talks about remote monitoring and control and transitive responsibility for bad actors.