hardcodet / wpf-notifyicon

NotifyIcon (aka system tray icon or taskbar icon) for the WPF platform
MIT License
828 stars 130 forks source link

License consideration? #56

Closed trungnt2910 closed 1 month ago

trungnt2910 commented 3 years ago

Hi, I love all your controls here. However, your license, the CPOL, prevents the library from being used in many open source projects because of its restrictions on "illegal" and "immoral" usage. Could you please re-release this package under another popular license out there, such as the LGPLv3 or the MIT license? This could help other projects a lot! Anyway, I don't see much use of notify icons for misdeeds anyway.

Thanks.

Lakritzator commented 2 years ago

I'm not the license holder nor an expert on licenses, but from my point of view you should explain in a bit more details why this should be done?

Can you elaborate why CPOL prevents you to use the library? I'm not extremely sure about the implications of using the DLL in any project vs. using the source, I guess you still need to add the license to your project? I'm no lawyer...

I never looked at CPOL in details, but I guess you mean that line "You agree not to use the Work for illegal, immoral or improper purposes, or on pages containing illegal, immoral or improper material."

I know that this restriction is a limitation, and open source should be as "freedom of speech". Although I myself wouldn't like to see my projects be used to do harm.

Let's have a discussion...

trungnt2910 commented 2 years ago

I intended to create another library myself, and wanted to use this library as a dependency to my own. My library is locked under the GPL, which is incompatible with your library, licensed under the CPOL.

Also, I cannot license my library under a permissive license (MIT license or similar ones), because, as my library depends on the CPOL-licensed library, it is "covered" by the license, and I therefore don't have the ability to give my end users the right "to deal in the Software without restriction".

Lakritzator commented 2 years ago

@trungnt2910 thanks for your fast feedback, I will talk to the project author and get his standpoint on the license.

@hardcodet I agree with the idea behind CPOL, but it does make the usability of this repo very limited. I didn't yet integrate it in Greenshot, but looking at the current facts, I think I also cannot do that. It's an old license, I would advice to go with a more permissive license. Looking at CPOL and what it more or less means, I would also advice to use MIT or also LGPLv3, as was mentioned by @trungnt2910.

Lakritzator commented 2 years ago

@punker76 I'd love to hear your view on this, so we can advise Philipp.

hardcodet commented 2 years ago

I'm fine altering the license if the CPOL impairs adoption. MIT would work for me 👍

punker76 commented 2 years ago

@Lakritzator I‘m also fine with MIT or LGPLv3