(IMPORTANT) Add a license to this repository

[moorehousew]

I just noticed there isn't a license file in this repository (why???). Please add one ASAP, both to protect yourself from copyright suits (which any collaborator could probably bring against you as-is), as well as end-users.

I recommend the MIT license, personally.

EDIT: I also noticed a prior discussion (#24) about this. Don't close this issue until you get this done, as it is likely a more serious problem than you realize. Bukkit was killed because of licensing stupidity.

[moorehousew]

IANAL, but if NovelAI has copied any code from this repository (as I've seen claimed), this is also a clear case of copyright infringement because they didn't have a license explicitly granting such a right.

[Semisol]

I would recommend BSD-3 or MIT. If you would like to go on the more strict side of things use AGPL which I personally do not like.

[C43H66N12O12S2]

The last time this was discussed @AUTOMATIC1111 was partial to AGPL. IMO LGPL or AGPL v3 would be fine though it'd be nice to hear from the plugin makers.

[Semisol]

The GPL licenses are a bit strict in my opinion but we'll see.

[moorehousew]

AGPL/LGPL isn't too bad either. Just not anything titled "GPL v3", please.

[barleyj21]

What is the default agreement with github when a person create an account and a repository here? Maybe Automatic1111 is already fine and if he adds some license it would instead make things much worse

[ZeroCool22]

What is the default agreement with github when a person create an account and a repository here? Maybe Automatic1111 is already fine and if he adds some license it would instead make things much worse

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#f-copyright-infringement-and-dmca-policy

[CapableWeb]

There is a issue about this already: https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/issues/24

It was closed without any sort of resolution nor any mention about why it was closed.

[moorehousew]

If NovelAI did actually reuse AUTOMATIC1111's code, and AUTOMATIC1111 later licenses this code as MIT or some other permissive license, then did NovelAI retroactively not do anything illegal?

If you copy someone's work at a certain date, and are granted a license at a later date- your use during the start of that period to its end was still illegal, and you're still liable for damages/royalties that arose during that period. A grant of rights must explicitly be retroactive for it to be, well, retroactive.

What is the default agreement with github when a person create an account and a repository here? Maybe Automatic1111 is already fine and if he adds some license it would instead make things much worse

GitHub's ToS protects GitHub from copyright infringement via the forking functionality on the site. It does not protect any repository owner or any end-user from claims of tort over distributing, downloading, compiling, or otherwise using the software in question in any way from litigious collaborators.

[junguler]

doesn't this repo make use of other repositories with different kinds of licenses? some of them don't even mention a widely known free license and just link to a document file, so if automatic1111 decides to choose a license ideally it should be one that reflects/allows that

[knobz]

All NAI drama aside, It would be good to see a license of any kind added as there's a rampant rumor AUTOMATIC is planning to take this repo closed source.

[Engineer-of-Stuff]

I think making this repo closed-source is a great idea.

[LumiWasTaken]

I feel like y'all are a bit overreacting ... just let a guy who enjoys doing stuff do his stuff he is probably aware of the risk and the down / upsides along with the effort that comes with it.

You can see he is putting his time into making this something even more amazing than it is and discussions like this only do... what? People unrelated to the Owner discussing what the owner should and should not do?

Make a fork add your own stuff if you feel the need to?

[CapableWeb]

1) Some people are under the impression that this repository is Open Source software, which it currently is not.

2) It's harder for the community to contribute to a project where the owner has 100% copyright over any code in the repository, it stops being in the benefit for the community and starts being in benefit for the owner

3) Other project who want to base their work on what's going on here or be inspired by any feature, risk getting into legal trouble if they do so.

4) You could technically fork the repository via GitHub but again, that might put you at legal risk and what exactly you can do to avoid that, is unclear.

5) Everyone contributing code technically retains the copyright over the code they wrote and contributed, which furthers make licensing a mess.

6) Not being clear about the license (closed source, open source, source available, whatever) potentially opens them up to lawsuits themselves, which is never good.

I'm not saying what license Automatic1111 should chose here (as I said in https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/issues/24#issuecomment-1272041887), I just don't want the situation to be ambiguous.

It's perfectly fine if Automatic1111 wants to have 100% copyright over any code committed to this repository, and within their right of course, but they should make that 100% clear in that case, by adding some sort of official information about this, in a file named LICENSE or COPYRIGHT, or add something about it to the readme, so there is no ambiguity of what license this code lives under.

[LumiWasTaken]

1. Some people are under the impression that this repository is Open Source software, which it currently is not.

   2. It's harder for the community to contribute to a project where the owner has 100% copyright over any code in the repository, it stops being in the benefit for the community and starts being in benefit for the owner

   3. Other project who want to base their work on what's going on here or be inspired by any feature, risk getting into legal trouble if they do so.

   4. You could technically fork the repository via GitHub but again, that might put you at legal risk and what exactly you can do to avoid that, is unclear.

   5. Everyone contributing code technically retains the copyright over the code they wrote and contributed, which furthers make licensing a mess.

   6. Not being clear about the license (closed source, open source, source available, whatever) potentially opens them up to lawsuits themselves, which is never good.

I'm not saying what license Automatic1111 should chose here (as I said in #24 (comment)), I just don't want the situation to be ambiguous.

It's perfectly fine if Automatic1111 wants to have 100% copyright over any code committed to this repository, and within their right of course, but they should make that 100% clear in that case, by adding some sort of official information about this, in a file named LICENSE or COPYRIGHT, or add something about it to the readme, so there is no ambiguity of what license this code lives under.

just let a guy who enjoys doing stuff do his stuff he is probably aware of the risk and the down / upsides along with the effort that comes with it.

You might have valid points. Yet you are missing the point of that ur not forced to work on it if you do fear risking a lawsuit or anything.

He certainly does have a brain and i'd assume he is aware of it.

[CapableWeb]

Yet you are missing the point of that ur not forced to work on it if you do fear risking a lawsuit or anything.

Of course, no one is forced to do anything. But I do want to use it and I want to embed it in other things I'm building too, but currently I can't, without needing to lawyer up first, which sucks a bit.

[LumiWasTaken]

Of course, no one is forced to do anything. But I do want to use it and I want to embed it in other things I'm building too, but currently I can't, without needing to lawyer up first, which sucks a bit.

What i'm reading inbetween the lines here is then: YOU want to use it in your project YOU are too spooked because of legal stuff.

Then yes, i can see how badly you want it to be licensed.

But on the other side he has much more important stuff to do... have u ever considered that he might have many more things he'd like to do and add before people use it too widely?

[CapableWeb]

I want to be able to use it and contribute back additions like anyone else in the community, but right now I'm standoffish on doing so as there is no license. Others expressed the same sentiment.

Not sure why you're speaking for @AUTOMATIC1111 when they could jump into this issue whenever they want themselves. Until then, I think I made my point clear and hope for the sake of the community that eventually there is some sort of license added, FOSS or not.

[LumiWasTaken]

Pretty sure Automatic has more relevant things to do ^^

[CapableWeb]

Seems there has been a suggested addition of adding a LICENSE file, together with various licenses of embedded/used projects, overall looks very good :clap: :clap: :clap:

[LumiWasTaken]

Highly doubt it will be Merged.

[aoirusann]

Hoping for a clear LICENSE. Though I don't know much about legal matters, a LICENSE gives me peace of mind when developing for this project. Or an explanation for no LICENSE? There are also some repos without a license.

[LumiWasTaken]

Nobody forces you to stay here. He isnt taking money for all of this He is sitting 8 Hours here pushing commits

And all of you here have nothing better to do than to cry about License and Copied code.

Just let the guy enjoy his life and look for alternatives if you cannot handle someone not listening to you.

[LumiWasTaken]

That Reddit screenshot is the perfect Summary of what 99% of people here feel like.

If u are not happy with it, move on. Why ruin the fun? Nobody is being harmed here.

Nobody forces you to stay here. He isnt taking money for all of this He is sitting 8 Hours here pushing commits And all of you here have nothing better to do than to cry about License and Copied code. Just let the guy enjoy his life and look for alternatives if you cannot handle someone not listening to you.

It is said that culture is created by leadership. It begs the question, is this culture compatible with laws and are contributors aware of the anti open source behavior? Will there be further efforts to block giving people the ability to understand and make informed decisions?

[krisfail]

That Reddit screenshot is the perfect Summary of what 99% of people here feel like. If u are not happy with it, move on. Why ruin the fun? Nobody is being harmed here.

Weighing the fun against a having a sustainable project which isn't relegated to seedy sites which ignore transgressions. When and if this project gets booted off Github (which seems inevitable with the displayed attitudes), the same 99% will complain that they are being victimized without owning up to the fact that there were plenty of opportunities to right the course. Project leaders know this and are already planning an exit #2268

The harm is that many users believe they are contributing to an open source project. They may not realize that Auto is asserting himself as code owner master/CODEOWNERS This means that the code is not free, and does not support the commons.

Note that "CODEOWNERS" is not intended to determine who owns the code in an intellectual property context. https://github.blog/2017-07-06-introducing-code-owners/ It is simply a file that allows GitHub to automatically assign people to the review process. I would also strongly prefer that the open source license be explicitly marked on this repository. However, your obstructive comments on multiple pull requests seem to me to be a self-centered act that is disruptive to the order of the open source development community.

[LumiWasTaken]

Thank you @yuuki76 for writing out my Thoughts in a polite way.

[LumiWasTaken]

Oh uh, looks like we did hit a sensitive spot reaches out for the popcorn

[krisfail]

open source community.

Please advise me which open source license people are contributing under? There is no open source community here at this time. At worst, its a self proclaimed pirating community.

I understand what you are trying to say, and I agree that this project is not open source in the strict sense of the word, but I think what you are doing is, in any case, an act of harassment.

[Kinsmir]

And don't forget that "No license" is also still a license on its own 🤡

In our case, we are allowed to fork from the GitHub terms of service, just not allowed to distribute/share it ourselves. So long as we always give AUTOMATIC1111 his repositories we still comply with it.

Anyway, I agree with @yuuki76 that this more harassment and spam at this point.

[Kinsmir]

👋

[LumiWasTaken]

👋

I got the same response! That was fairly quick.

Love to see

[moorehousew]

I'm going to reiterate, as a collaborator to this project, that a license is mandatory if anybody wants to legally use or help develop this software. This applies to everyone, even AUTOMATIC, who has accepted code into this repository which is under the unlicensed copyright of multiple collaborators. At any moment, a collaborator could issue a valid DMCA takedown request against this repository.

I repeatedly come back to this issue to see individuals advocating for no license at all, or categorizing such an endeavour as "lesser" or contrary to the aim of this repository. The level of legal and professional ignorance in this issue thread is inexcusable.

As of today, forking and viewing this repository remains, strictly-speaking, legal. Downloading it, downloading a fork, running it, running a fork, modifying a fork, etc. all remain explicitly illegal activities, as per universally recognized copyright laws. The worst part, really, is that this repository does not need to be in legal limbo. None of the code is stolen, to my knowledge. AUTOMATIC is free to decide upon a license and collect the consent of prior contributors to it.

Please keep reality in mind when commenting on such issues, thank you.

[LumiWasTaken]

You're under no obligation to choose a license. However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. If you're creating an open source project, we strongly encourage you to include an open source license. The Open Source Guide provides additional guidance on choosing the correct license for your project.

From Github themself.

I personally think, picking no license FOR NOW until the project has been put into a polished state is a viable option considering that Automatic is happy with the result.

Maybe a comment from @AUTOMATIC1111 would be very valueable hecc even a thumbs up would give enough input to have the drama settled.

[moorehousew]

I would also appreciate a comment from @AUTOMATIC1111.

[zsinisi001]

The state of the project’s polish has nothing to do with whether or not a license should be added. GitHub also says this on that page: “When you make a creative work (which includes code), the work is under exclusive copyright by default. Unless you include a license that specifies otherwise, nobody else can copy, distribute, or modify your work without being at risk of take-downs, shake-downs, or litigation. Once the work has other contributors (each a copyright holder), “nobody” starts including you.”

This work does have other contributors, which means that even Automatic is at legal risk from the contributors. This is a problem that will only grow larger as more contributions are made. Like moorehousew said, a DMCA request from a contributor could take this whole project down. @Automatic1111 pls add any license before this becomes a bigger problem, I love all the work you and everyone else has done on the repo and would hate to see something like this mess anything up

[neural-loop]

It looks like the plan is to keep it proprietary. Haven't seen anything to indicate otherwise..

[LumiWasTaken]

So sad. Alexa play despacito for those who have issues reading and understanding

[endomorphosis]

I agree wholeheartedly with @moorehousew who is precisely correct in every point that he has made,

[stefnotch]

Adding a license is rather important, as previous comments already explained.

Even if the intent is to keep the code as "proprietary", one would still go out of their way to deal with legal issues. Most commonly, that's done by getting your contributors to sign a CLA (contributors license agreement) or by having a license that makes it explicit that you own all of the code. Notice how that would not stop the author from adding an open source license later down the road.

Otherwise, one ends up with a patchwork of various copyrights and pretty much has to trust everyone here and more to not randomly start issuing entirely valid DMCA takedown requests. This status quo very much makes it hard for the author to add an open source license later down the road.

[stefnotch]

Politely pinging @AUTOMATIC1111 since this topic is rather important, and waiting longer only makes it harder down the road. I'd love to see this repository get a license of any form, even if to just cover the pull requests.

And also pinging @dfaker @C43H66N12O12S2 @yfszzx @d8ahazard , since as far as I can tell, all of you lovely people have contributed a fair amount of code to this repository. As I understand it, each and every single of you cares about this repository so much that you've spent a significant amount of time writing code for it.

Two reasonably practical ways of precluding potential legal issues, for at least your code, would be to

• assign all the relevant rights to AUTOMATIC1111, thus giving him ownership of the code and letting him decide how to move forward
• making it clear that your code is licensed under a sufficiently open-source license, that still makes it possible for AUTOMATIC1111 to use the code, and potentially re-license it under a stricter open-source license

The same goes for the other amazing contributors who I've not pinged.

[endomorphosis]

I believe that an alternative to offering a license, which could imply that he claims copyright ownership of code, which may have been subject to some controversies e.g. NovelAI, etc, is that he can declare that he abandons all copyright in the works, and thus that whatever contributions or derivative works he may have made are "public domain" to the extent that they are not claimed by someone else.

[C43H66N12O12S2]

@stefnotch Personally, I'm willing to sign the ownership of my code to Automatic or sign whichever license he'd pick.

@AUTOMATIC1111 This has been a continuing discussion and pain point for some people. I believe it'd be much appreciated if you stated your plans - even if that plan is continuing with no license.

[d8ahazard]

I personally would encourage going with an open source license that allows free distribution and reuse of the project, and discourages anyone from trying to sell our work.

But, that's just my opinion, and I'm open to going with whatever automatic wants to do. I'm just a contributor after all. (CC-BY-NC)

On Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 4:28 AM C43H66N12O12S2 @.***> wrote:

@stefnotch https://github.com/stefnotch Personally, I'm willing to sign the ownership of my code to Automatic or sign whichever license he'd pick.

@AUTOMATIC1111 https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111 This has been a continuing discussion and pain point for some people. I believe it'd be much appreciated if you stated your plans - even if that plan is continuing with no license.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/issues/2059#issuecomment-1288725684, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAMO4NCMYPKMYBFNNAOQNB3WEZJE5ANCNFSM6AAAAAARATYJWM . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***>

[Ronsor]

CC-BY-NC is not a license meant for code (non of the creative commons ones are).

[d8ahazard]

Yeah, but that's not really true. It can be used for software.

On Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 7:20 PM Ronsor @.***> wrote:

CC-BY-NC is not a license meant for code (non of the creative commons ones are).

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/issues/2059#issuecomment-1292803639, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAMO4NFTFJNQ2S6SFVSC3ITWFHDD3ANCNFSM6AAAAAARATYJWM . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***>

[Ronsor]

It can be, but it generally shouldn't be. I think a GPL-family license would be best: AGPLv3 (first choice), or GPLv2+ (second choice)

Edit: also NC licenses are not FOSS

[stefnotch]

endomorphosis, C43H66N12O12S2, 8ahazard Thank you very much for taking your time to respond. Here's to hoping that AUTOMATIC1111 eventually finds the time to take a look at this issue.

And quick note regarding the quite lovely CC-BY-NC license: Creative commons themselves doesn't really recommend using it for code. It probably isn't too bad if one uses a CC license, but it's also reasonably easy to pick one that's designed for software. https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software

[endomorphosis]

I see that there is a comment that has been deleted, i want to repost that comment here:

"Whether or not this repo has a license for the code written by @AUTOMATIC1111 and other contributors is up to the authors--however, at the very least, this repo is out of compliance with the license requirements of all the places where it copied code from projects that contain licenses requiring inclusion of their licenses.

Example (just picking one place at random): The code here: https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/blob/master/modules/codeformer/codeformer_arch.py#L1 -- which notes that it was copied from sczhou/CodeFormer does not include a copy of the license from that codebase as noted in the repo for that source: https://github.com/sczhou/CodeFormer/blob/master/LICENSE#L1-L10

Any place that has copied code from other projects that have license requirements of including the source license will need to be addressed before this software is legally usable.

This is absolutely correct, and I can only imagine that Automatic is not putting a license on the code, because of the legal allegations that were made by novelAI, and the counterarguments, that he stole from novelAI and NovelAI stole from him. I can only guess that automatic has not responded, because of the allegations and the common sense "no self snitching", as well as keeping the code as a weapon to claim copyright violations against others. However I find it disheartening, that he might allow many people to violate his copryrights, and yet that he might have to use it as a defense against copyright infringement suits.

I really wish that this whole NovelAI drama was put to rest, and that the project was given a copyright license.

[atomantic]

@endomorphosis thanks for the additional thoughts--I realized after commenting that it would be best to start the process of properly licensing code included from other places in a merge request :) https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/pull/4222

Hopefully this is a pattern that will be adopted at least for code that has been "borrowed" or "copied" from referenced sources without proper license inclusion.

The CodeFormer case is a bit more complicated as it means that this codebase cannot be used commercially without an agreement specifically from S-Lab. I have not gone through and audited all the code yet within this repo to track sub-license requirements but it's worth doing as some copied code could have any kind of license that requires or restricts usage (or like this project, no license, making it technically illegal even for non-commercial use). I'm not a copyright lawyer but I think liability waivers and "as-is" claims inside popular libraries like MIT mean that liability for copied code sourced without permission fall through the chain of usage all the way to the final user and do not stop at the offending source copier.

[neural-loop]

@atomantic If you check the Codeformer repo, I think they did not have the S-Lab licence applied until after the date that the code was copied into this repository. When it was copied it was under a creative commons share alike (maybe non-commercial, don't remember for sure)