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RJVB / afsctool

This is a version of "brkirch"'s afsctool utility that allows end-users to leverage HFS+ compression.
https://brkirch.wordpress.com/afsctool
GNU General Public License v3.0
187 stars 18 forks source link

Incorrect license #56

Open viraptor opened 2 years ago

viraptor commented 2 years ago

The project currently lists two licenses, but doesn't look like it can be distributed under either. Specifically there's GPL3 (https://github.com/RJVB/afsctool/blob/master/License.txt) and BSL (https://github.com/RJVB/afsctool/blob/master/LICENSE_1_0.txt) but one of the files is just proprietary:

https://github.com/RJVB/afsctool/blob/be437447b45db354400849b1f632cd8df3cf4732/src/ParallelProcess.cpp#L5

Was the intention to place it in a public domain instead? There are licenses made for that purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain-equivalent_license or you could explicitly say that the source is placed in public domain. Otherwise no license effectively makes the code proprietary and not free to use.

RJVB commented 2 years ago

The code I wrote myself clearly states that I make it available without any form of license (= restriction) at all. IMO that's all there is to know.

viraptor commented 2 years ago

I'm sorry, this is annoying, but you've accidentally done the opposite :( In most countries your work is copyrighted/protected by default, without you having to do anything. That means if you don't grant any license, you're not granting anyone else the rights to use the code.

If you don't care what happens with it, there's short options available like: place into public domain wtfpl or a little longer more explicit: unlicense (or even just removing the line so it's covered by GPL3+BSL in this repo)

Why I raised this issue in the first place: I'd love to use your software (thank you for writing it) and was packaging it for Nix. When researching what license to list for it, I found GPL3, BSL, and this header. However, legally, the intersection of those is "unfree"/proprietary. If you could change the header to explicitly granting everyone rights to use it, that would solve the problem. Thank you!

amarshall commented 1 year ago

@RJVB Do you intend to update the license indicated in the source to reflect your apparent intent listed above? As @viraptor has indicated, without any form of license, the source in unfree and its use heavily restricted.

badger200 commented 1 year ago

@viraptor I got a good laugh reading your link to wtfpl 😂 👏🏼 I love it!