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Kord-Extensions / kord-extensions

Kord extensions framework, providing commands and distinct units of functionality
https://kordex.dev
European Union Public License 1.2
110 stars 27 forks source link

Relicensing discussion with alternative licences #311

Closed gdude2002 closed 1 month ago

gdude2002 commented 2 months ago

More discussion is required! See this comment: https://github.com/Kord-Extensions/kord-extensions/issues/311#issuecomment-2267510960

As explained in the recent blog post on the site, I've been planning to re-licence KordEx under the AGPL and provide both commercial (paid) and non-profit (free on application) alternative licences. This re-license does not include the translations, which will be moved to a different repo and kept under the current MPL-2.0 licence.

In order to re-licence the project, I'll need to either get the permission of everyone with non-trivial contributions, or rewrite their contributions myself if they don't consent.

This issue exists for two reasons:

  1. To chat with you all about the re-licence and what you'd like to see from the alternative licences (worth noting that these licences will not cover the source code, that'll always be AGPL)
  2. To get permission from previous contributors with significant contributions

If I've mentioned you, please leave a comment below with your opinions, questions, and suggestions!

Additionally, I've opened a GitHub Discussion so we can chat about the alternative licences. Please don't hesitate to weigh in!

Significant Contributors

ByteAlex commented 2 months ago

I‘m fine with the relicensing 🙏

NyCodeGHG commented 2 months ago

How do you plan to provide commercial licenses? That would require a copyright assignment to you, or licensing of the contributions under a more permissive license.

gdude2002 commented 2 months ago

My general thought was to start with the AGPL relicense, and then work with the community on the terms of the other licences - there's definitely still research to be done there, but I wasn't assuming that it'd be possible to do everything in one fell swoop!

DRSchlaubi commented 2 months ago

How do you plan to provide commercial licenses? That would require a copyright assignment to you, or licensing of the contributions under a more permissive license.

Probably similar to what Pterodactyl (now pelican) did: https://pelican.dev/blog/relicensing-pelican-to-agpl & https://pelican.dev/blog/commercial-license-faq

Relicensing Pelican to AGPL | Pelican
Introduction
Commercial License FAQ | Pelican
As some of you know, people have been asking us questions about when you need a commercial license or not.
lukellmann commented 2 months ago

Feel free to relicense my small contributions :)

gdude2002 commented 2 months ago

Probably similar to what Pterodactyl (now pelican) did

Potentially? I think the idea of a CLA is a viable approach, though I'm not entirely sure that I'm in favour of licensing copyright to myself perpetually, like Pterodactyl did.

I think a CLA is important for every complex licensing setup, though - it'd at least help ensure that contributors know what licensing setup they're getting into, and record their agreement. There are bots for this!

I do kinda find their relicensing approach interesting:

In order to relicense a source code file we need the permission from the overall majority owner. A file is considered majority owned by an author if 90%+ of the lines have last been updated by that author.

It's difficult to find any real legal precedent for relicensing, but I guess this is one approach. I might consider it in the future, though I feel like my current process is a little more fair to the contributors!

Leo40Git commented 2 months ago

I consent to my contribution (of removing 4 lines) being relicensed.

ToxicMushroom commented 2 months ago

I'm fine with relicensing

NyCodeGHG commented 2 months ago

I'm fine with a relicense of my contributions under the AGPL, but I really don't like the idea of selling the code under a commercial license.

gdude2002 commented 2 months ago

Is there an issue you have in mind in particular?

To me, this feels like a natural way to keep the project open source while still finding a way to combat part of the rampant exploitation by for-profit companies that is so common in the FOSS ecosystem as a whole.

DRSchlaubi commented 2 months ago

👍

sschr15 commented 2 months ago

Am okay with relicensing

Scotsguy commented 2 months ago

I'm fine with the AGPL.

Distractic commented 2 months ago

Approved (and I give you my approval for yhe next license changes)

gdude2002 commented 2 months ago

I just wanted to let you all know that I updated the first comment with a clarification - that I'm not intending on making the source code available under the alternative licences. They'll only be covering binaries - although that approach still requires everyone to sign off on it.

Sorry, I only just remembered I forgot to say that anywhere.

Thanks for everyone's support and input so far!

Galarzaa90 commented 2 months ago

I'm okay with relicensing.

DeDiamondPro commented 2 months ago

I'm okay with relicensing, and also give my permission for having the binaries under a non commercial/paid license like you stated in a previous comment.

gdude2002 commented 2 months ago

I've opened a GitHub discussion with my thoughts on alternative licences - I'd hope folks would weigh in with their opinions and help me figure some things out, if y'all have time! https://github.com/orgs/Kord-Extensions/discussions/2

GitHub
Alternative Licenses · Kord-Extensions · Discussion #2
As mentioned in Kord-Extensions/kord-extensions#311 - I'm looking at relicensing KordEx code to the AGPL, and providing binaries under both that licence, a commercial licence (that must be paid for...
NoComment1105 commented 2 months ago

I'm ok with relicensing to AGPL 👍

bosukas commented 1 month ago

👍

gdude2002 commented 1 month ago

A couple of people have brought up a few problems with this approach, and I've had a think about things. There are a few issues I've been unable to reconcile:

I don't think these are really solvable problems under this approach, and I'm perhaps a little annoyed that I didn't think of them sooner (and they didn't come up during the discussions on the Discord server).

My current thought is to once again look into the EUPL, which has more accessible documentation than it did the last time I looked into it. For example:

I think more discussion needs to be had, but this is obviously a dry topic, so I'm not too surprised more people haven't chatted about it - but it's important!

Switching to the EUPL would obviously change the conditions around the alternative licences quite a bit, and I'm not entirely sure if the concept of alternative licences will make sense under it - even if they only apply to the binaries. However, I'd prefer for KordEx to be accessible and available rather than focusing on income!

Anyone have any input?

gdude2002 commented 1 month ago

Having thought about this some more, it's clear that the AGPL is not the way forward for KordEx.

Once I've done a little more research into the EUPL, I'll start a new GitHub Discussion that has more useful information, and we can nail this down for good.

Thanks to all of you for your support regardless!

gdude2002 commented 1 month ago

The new licensing discussion and call for consent has been posted here: https://github.com/orgs/Kord-Extensions/discussions/3

Please direct all discussion there instead of this issue.

GitHub
Relicensing: Take two! · Kord-Extensions · Discussion #3
Introduction As mentioned in previous discussions, I'm attempting to relicense KordEx to lower the possibility of corporate exploitation for profit. Previously, the plan was to relicense to the AGP...