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AerialX / rawksd

Wii Rawk!
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License clarification #7

Open Leseratte10 opened 2 years ago

Leseratte10 commented 2 years ago

I remember a couple years ago Riivolution was closed-source and only available as binaries. Great to see that the source code is now available in a public repository for people to look at.

WiiBrew's Riivolution page lists Riivolution as "Freeware". Does that still apply, meaning, the source code in this repository is purely to look at, and there's no actual open-source license that the code is published under? I didn't see a LICENSE file, nor a mention in the README or in the source code files.

Would it be possible to publish Riivolution under an Open-Source license like the GPL? Or, if that's not possible and Riivolution is intended to still be Freeware, just with source code available to look at, could a LICENSE file be added to this repository regardless which clarifies that Riivolution is not under any open-source license?

AerialX commented 2 years ago

Sorry, this is a bit unclear because (re)licensing would require some sort of sign-off by tueidj. It's currently effectively provided as-is with copyright held by the original authors. That should be clarified somewhere!

My personal stance is that I'm happy to accept fixes or other contributions and might eventually make a new release down the line if one is warranted. Until an open-source license is selected, it might be a good idea to require assignment of copyright for PRs to allow for such a license change in the future.

Leseratte10 commented 2 years ago

Assignment of copyright might be a bit extreme, but maybe something could be added that all new contributions / PRs to the project are under a license like MIT, or 2-clause BSD. These licenses are fairly open, so MIT or 2-BSD code could be used in GPL code as well, should Riivolution be distributed under the GPL2 or GPL3 in the future.

Do you have contact information like an email address of tueidj? When I google that name I can find a defunct website and a bunch of accounts that haven't been used in a long time. A project without any license is really not ideal, so it would be great if tueidj could be contacted to agree to a proper license ...