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> The currently active fork of SDSL (https://github.com/xxsds/sdsl-lite https://github.com/xxsds/sdsl-lite) has a BSD license. How is that legally possible? As
by WCSTombs 4y ago
> The currently active fork of SDSL (https://github.com/xxsds/sdsl-lite https://github.com/xxsds/sdsl-lite) has a BSD license.
How is that legally possible? As I understand, the GPL doesn't allow a derivative work to remove the copyleft provisions from the license.
Or maybe I misunderstood your comment?
- kroltan 4y agoNot sure if this is the case here, but you can change the license of an open source project by unanimous permission of every contributor. (Possibly removing the contributions from those who disagree) This will not revoke the licenses for copies already in use, but any future users will be subject to whatever license the version they're using uses.
- sam_bristow 4y agoIt looks pretty sus to me for a couple of reasons: - the commiter who changed the license has zero commits in the upstream repo - the commit message has no other context or links to a discussion
- jltsiren 4y agoThe person who changed the license was one of the main developers of SDSL and one of the coauthors of the papers describing the library. They made plenty of commits to the library, as you can see by looking at the commit histories of individual files. They don't appear on the list of contributors for whatever obscure reason related to the internal workings of GitHub.
- sam_bristow 4y agoAh, in that case I take it back. That's great news.
- kroltan 4y agoTheir commits are probably using an email not associated with their GitHub account, which is, as far as I know, how GH associates attribution. Maybe GH should list contributions not associated to any account by their commit email directly, instead of hiding the contributors, but that's a different matter :P