Copyright notice modification in repositories based on this template

[dani0854]

I am not a lawyer disclaimer.

After yesterday situation with pynose, I started looking through my repositories to make sure everything is ok, and also to dig a little bit deeper with my understanding of copyright and licensing in open source.

Originally when I created nur-packages repository I looked at other forks. And some people did just update the Copyright notice in license with the current year and their name, while others kept original copyright notice, so did the same.

Now reading through MIT license it states that

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

After searching the web for while I found that there are a bunch of conflicting opinions on copyright notice on the MIT license. Some say that you should append your name to copyright notice or create a separate copyright notice line in the license file above or bellow, others say that any modification of copyright notice is not allowed, and the new copyright notice should be manually applied to each modification, which makes it a nightmare. Also, there is a case of substantial portions, and some argue that since git contains history, means that it also contains previous versions of copyright notice.

I thought maybe it's a good idea to add a few lines to README about what to do with the copyright (and license) after creating a repository from this template, with a not legal advice disclaimer (unless it is). It will make much easier for people without in depth knowledge of licensing (like me) to follow setup instructions of nur-packages.

[fgaz]

Were this a regular project I'd ask them to fix the copyright notice. However this is just a template. Personally I'm fine with relicensing it as CC0-1.0 (that doesn't require attribution) if all other contributors agree.

cc @Mic92 @toonn @dfrankland @abathur @rycee @wamserma @mainrs

[abathur]

All I did was fix up some CI stuff in .travis.yml. I wouldn't really consider that meaningful and the file's been removed since I made those edits, so I'm happy to endorse CC0-1.0 (or anything else there's consensus on).

[Mic92]

I am fine with any license.

[wamserma]

I'm also fine with anything that is permissive.

CC0-1.0 or the Unlicense would be nice, as anyone can just grab this template without worrying about correct attribution.

Maybe add a note to the instructions to mention that the license is inherited when using the template and users of the template are free to choose a more suitable license, if they need to.

[mainrs]

I only changed the CI workflow. This shouldn't fall under any copyright; I made zero additions to the actual code. I am fine with whatever copyright you deem right.

[toonn]

CC0 sounds fine to me.

[rycee]

Any free software license is OK by me, including CC0.