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hep-packaging-coordination / ff

Mirror of the FF library written by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh
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Acquire approval for open source license from van Oldenborgh estate #4

Open matthewfeickert opened 3 days ago

matthewfeickert commented 3 days ago

As Geert Jan van Oldenborgh died in 2021 and FF was unlicensed at the time of his death, until his estate (the current copyright holders) give permission for a license to be used a license, like MIT, can not be legally applied to the software.

Originally posted by @matthewfeickert in https://github.com/hep-packaging-coordination/ff/pull/3#issue-2684067967

matthewfeickert commented 3 days ago

I am not a lawyer, but I assume that if the estate were to write and sign a short note that says something to the effect of:

We, the signed acting members of the estate of Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, license Geert Jan van Oldenborgh's FF code under the MIT license as follows:

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2024 The estate of Geert Jan van Oldenborgh

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

and then if that signed note and the email it came in were attached to a PR that should be sufficient to legally add an open source license.