What license is this released under?

ShixiangWang / sigminer

🌲 An easy-to-use and scalable toolkit for genomic alteration signature (a.k.a. mutational signature) analysis and visualization in R https://shixiangwang.github.io/sigminer/reference/index.html

https://shixiangwang.github.io/sigminer/

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What license is this released under? #386

Closed jbedo closed 3 years ago

jbedo commented 3 years ago

It is unclear what license this code is released under. The LICENSE file (https://github.com/ShixiangWang/sigminer/blob/master/LICENSE) does not contain a license, and the README states MIT but then contradicts that statement by saying non-commercial use only, which is incompatible with the MIT.

Could you clarify the licensing conditions?

ShixiangWang commented 3 years ago

You can think there are two licenses:

MIT is for personal/open/research use
Commercial use must be granted by me and Prof Xue-Song Liu because I don't want any company make money by it without any input.

jbedo commented 3 years ago

I understand what you desire, but you cannot release it as MIT and exclude commercial use, as this is not MIT.

It would be really helpful if you stated the actual license clauses in the LICENSE file. It's especially confusing as the copy on CRAN appears to be MIT licensed and therefore usable in a commercial context.

ShixiangWang commented 3 years ago

Thanks for your suggestion. It's annoying to think the conflicts between open source and commercial use, as I care the code instead of the money. Sometimes I read some open source licenses to understand the free software and protect my code, and could not find a way to balance them.

Do you have any good option to handle my concerns?

Thanks.

jbedo commented 3 years ago

I would recommend speaking to your legal department, I'm not a lawyer. I know the "common clause" license forbids commercial use and there may be more that are more suitable fo ryou.

I think the biggest issue currently is the empty LICENSE file, the way CRAN is currently setup (take a look at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sigminer/index.html) the license field says MIT and the LICENSE file is empty so it appears MIT licensed. This field is frequently used downstream to figure out if software is free or not, and if it is "incorrect" downstream users may inadvertently misuse it.

PS I'm not personally interested in commercial use of your work, just would like it to be clear how your software may be used so that your wishes are upheld.

ShixiangWang commented 3 years ago

Thanks for you kind suggestion. I will modify the LICENSE file to describe the limitation of commercial use.