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CarlosNZ / json-edit-react

React component for editing/viewing JSON/object data
https://carlosnz.github.io/json-edit-react/
MIT License
183 stars 18 forks source link

Question about the license #89

Closed IgorAufricht closed 4 months ago

IgorAufricht commented 4 months ago

Hi,

I have a question regarding the license this library uses:

Could you please clarify which license is the correct one? (Especially since the licenses are quite different regarding use in commercial products.)

Thank you!

rosscarnegie commented 4 months ago

I second this question.

(For Everyone) If an application includes a GPL-licensed library, the consuming application needs to also be licensed under the GPL. This means that any application that uses this must make their source code available (even of their modifications) and also permit modifications and redistribution.

(For the Author) Obviously you can restrict or unrestrict the library's usage as much or as little as you'd like: that's your perrogative.

The copy left nature of this license means that it is unlikely to be used in a commercial project. It likely means that some portion of people who are currently using it are likely doing so without realising that it may not be the right choice for them (totally their fault), and that people will be less likely to contribute to the project (which I suspect may be intentional? I did not see any guidelines for contributions).

If I can just offer my opinion: the GPL makes sense when you think that the potential users of this library will use it to create software who's primary functionality is substantially similar to your library i.e. displaying JSON data, and you want people to contribute to the open source project, rather than using it for their own purposes. But if you anticipate this being used as a component of an application that's potentially, very very different, let's say I want to use this to display data for the next redux and its devtools, then it's probably not the best choice. (because no matter how good my new library was, no one would want to use it commercially because your license essentially means their license trickles down to me and any potential consumer of my library).

Still, for whatever reason, if you did want to switch the license to something more permissive, I believe you'd have to consult any other contributors.

CarlosNZ commented 4 months ago

Thanks, I haven't really looked into this very seriously, I'm not a lawyer. But I'll have a look in the next week or so and clarify it.

CarlosNZ commented 4 months ago

Okay, I've updated the main license file to MIT.

Thanks for pointing this out.

IgorAufricht commented 4 months ago

Thank you, much appreciated!