mchowning commented 3 years ago

The WordPress organization is dual licensing the Gutenberg code base under the GNU General Public License, v2.0 (GPLv2) and the Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPLv2).

This issue exists to ask all contributors to give their permission for this change.

Why switch from licensing only under GPLv2?

Gutenberg has the potential to become a standard rich text editor across different services/CMS’s. However, this can only happen if services are able to use Gutenberg both on the web and in their mobile apps. Because of how mobile apps are packaged to be distributed, Gutenberg’s GPLv2 license prevents it from being used by any mobile app that is not open source. This is why Gutenberg has only been adopted on mobile by the WordPress mobile apps, which are under GPLv2 (WordPress for Android, WordPress for iOS). Many other apps have expressed interest in using Gutenberg, but they cannot adopt Gutenberg unless they are willing to open source their entire application.

This dual-licensing was first brought up in a Gutenberg discussion issue on GitHub on 2 July 2020 and then had the process described in a proposal post on Make/Core on 21 September 2020, and updated in a post on Make/Core on 5 March 2021.

Why switch to a dual license of GPLv2 and MPLv2?

By choosing a dual license, developers will have the freedom to use Gutenberg under the terms of either the MPLv2 or the GPLv2 license.
MPLv2 licensed software can be combined with other material if the files are separated (see paragraph 1.7 Larger Work and 3.3 Distribution of a Larger Work in the MPLv2). This allows proprietary mobile apps to integrate Gutenberg.
The MPLv2 is a copyleft license, like the GPL, where every derivative work must be licensed under the same license. Unlike the BSD or MIT licenses, no one can distribute the code under different terms. The MPLv2 forces anyone modifying Gutenberg to contribute back with their changes (bug fix, new feature, etc.).
The MPLv2 is compatible with the GPLv2 (see paragraph 1.12 Secondary License and 3.3. Distribution of a Larger Work in the MPLv2), so integration into WordPress and the WordPress apps will not be a problem.

What happens if I do not agree to dual-license my code contributions?

Past contributions to the Gutenberg project were made under the GPLv2 license. If we do not get consent to dual-license your past contributions, we will respect your copyright and rewrite or remove your contributions before relicensing this project. It would be a disservice to your time and the project’s history to have to resort to rewriting your contributions, so if you have questions, please leave a comment on the Make blog post: Dual-Licensing Gutenberg: Next Steps.

What does this change cover?

The dual licensing covers the code in Gutenberg repository: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg

What will happen with previous versions of Gutenberg?

Gutenberg versions prior to the license switch will remain under GPLv2.

List of Contributors

GitHub only permits 50 users to be "mentioned" at a time, and there are >800 past contributors to Gutenberg. Therefore, all past contributors from whom we are asking for consent to dual-license your past contributions will be mentioned in the comments below.

If you are mentioned in the comments below, then you contributed to Gutenberg, and we are asking for your consent to dual-license your Gutenberg contributions. By August 20, we ask you to post the following comment on this ticket if you agree with the change:

I irrevocably consent for my past contributions to Gutenberg to be dual-licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 and the Mozilla Public License version 2.0.

If you do not agree, please comment as well, as this will help us move forward.

How Are We Keeping Track of Who Consents?

We are keeping track of which contributors consent to the dual-license in the gutenberg-license repo.

Sorry For All the Notifications

I realize this has created a lot of notifications for everyone pinged on this issue, and I apologize to anyone negatively impacted by that.

Unsubscribe To Stop the Notifications

Once you've responded, you'll probably want to click the unsubscribe button in the sidebar to turn off all the notifications for this issue.

pattonwebz commented 3 years ago

If you just got like 20 million notifications from this thread like me click the unsubscribe button up top in the sidebar before you lose legitimate notifications in the wave :)

Screenshot from 2021-05-17 15-42-23