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netboy3 / MSM-vcvrack-plugin

VCV Rack Modules: MSM
MIT License
11 stars 2 forks source link

License issues (project should be GPLv3) #10

Open falkTX opened 2 years ago

falkTX commented 2 years ago

The LICENSE-dist.md file describes code imported into this project, some of which is GPL3. By virtue on how GPL works, the project itself should then become GPL too (what they call a "viral" license).

MSM specific code can still be MIT licensed, but the final project license needs to be updated.

Can you do that and correct the license? Or you think we should contact the original author?

netboy3 commented 2 years ago

Hi falkTX,

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Yes, you are correct. I've reached out to Phal-anx (the author) and am waiting for his response.

falkTX commented 2 years ago

Actually I think you got it wrong. When you converted the license.txt into license.md, you went to use the code license from rack v1, which is different from the rack v0.6 license. As far as I can see, MSM is quite old and used code from Rack when it was BSD licensed. There is no mention of GPL in https://github.com/Phal-anx/MSM/blob/0.6.52/License.txt

So I think all is fine. If you look at the license for fundamental v0.6 you will see the BSD style in place for it https://github.com/VCVRack/Fundamental/blob/v0.6/LICENSE.txt The LICENSE-dist.md file from this repo should specify this clearly, unless you imported the new fundamental code into the repo, is that the case?

netboy3 commented 2 years ago

I think you're right. I looked at 63ed44f2ea9bad09b1945850fd57d0eb3cab6f6b which was the all encompassing commit that Phal-anx did when he open-sourced it. The License.txt there indeed does not mention any GPL. As you mentioned when I cleaned it up in 2019, I went to every project mentioned there and updated the license terms, not taking into account that in 2016 it was not GPL'd yet. All my work on the plugin from the moment of adoption was original. The only part I'm not sure of is a recent update to the "clear" buttons in DualDelay that now use a VCVLightBezel which is a VCV component library item. Those are licensed under "CC BY-NC 4.0". The thing is, the component library graphics are part of the VCV SDK and not part of the plugin, so the question is whether just displaying them (and not copying the svg's) triggers the license requirement or not.