Repo Has No License

[agnostic-apollo]

Currently and since start of this repo, the license was not supplied so all contributions are technically under copyright of original authors and not licensed to be used by others.

https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io/commits/master?after=cb0333aedd959214223262ea54c128cbbde2f266+244&branch=master&qualified_name=refs%2Fheads%2Fmaster

Basically, we need to add a license. The site infrastructure in my opinion should be MIT licensed so that the multi-translation, multi-versioned, and web/android supported design being built can be used by other projects easily. The docs are pulled from other repos as well so community contributed docs should be permissively licensed (MIT/CC) and GPLv* shouldn't be enforced on them.

I have diffed master against 89b58fc8 and due to my rewrites of the site since I took over, the only parts that remain same is the home page words for english translation, images and the code for image rotation. So before a license can be added, the images need to be replaced and words changed if required, although only very minimal.

• https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io/blob/cb0333aedd959214223262ea54c128cbbde2f266/_data/t/en/views/home.yml
• https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io/tree/cb0333aedd959214223262ea54c128cbbde2f266/assets/globals/home
• https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io/blob/cb0333aedd959214223262ea54c128cbbde2f266/_layouts/home.html#L6

There was also chinese translations done by @2096779623, @licy183 and @DreamOneX and they all need to provide written proof below that their contributions can be released under the new license after its chosen.

https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io/tree/cb0333aedd959214223262ea54c128cbbde2f266/cn

There is an additional issue, the contributions to https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page are under Creative Commons Attribution license, which is not compatible with MIT and only GPLv3, so moving the wiki content to the site would be problematic, unless a complete rewrite is done or permission is taken from authors to relicense. We can also go with licensing the site infrastructure as MIT and the docs/posts/translations as CC, which would then solve the wiki problem.

Edit: I would prefer docs to be MIT to be consistent with lot of the code, and adding yet another license on top of MIT and GPLv3 complicates things for contributors and forkers. We can always ask wiki page authors for permission to relicense to MIT. One can always relicense MIT files under any more restrictive license, but with CC, only 2 options currently available. Basically, I am personally against CC for docs.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7435/mit-licensed-project-with-cc-by-sa-dependency

https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses

This should be done before the next termux app release which provides new docs.

@Grimler91 @sylirre

[Grimler91]

Great investigation there, removing the remaining old parts seems feasible, and I guess it would be okay to re-license after that (copyright is tricky though).

There's also the GNU Free Documentation License, but it is probably more suitable for wikipages and manpages rather than the current homepage.

Getting in contact with wiki contributors will be difficult (and trying to will take quite some time). We could require new pages to use another license, and start contacting authors that contributed a lot about re-licensing, and otherwise rewrite the main pages from scratch.

I don't really have any preference about which license(s) to use for the site.

[agnostic-apollo]

If there is no original code left, then no copyright issue should exist. Also technically not "re-licensing", but adding an initial license.

The wiki doesn't have all that many pages that would be moved. The termux-api-package related pages are mostly empty, and the ones that do have something is just a copy of --help, which is technically under MIT license anyways since termux-api-package is MIT licensed. The termux app specific pages for settings/properties, etc have already been mostly rewritten by me, so those won't matter. The russian translations ones written by @sylirre won't be ported anyways since we currently don't have russian support in the site, unless a russian maintainer takes up the responsibility in future and is willing to translate old and new pages. The remaining pages are related to packages, which often just contain descriptions or are outdated, requiring rewrites. Some are indeed meaningful, so we can check with authors for those. It will require some work, but better in the long run to not have complexity of multiple licenses making it harder for other.

https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Special:AllPages

https://github.com/termux/termux-api-package/blob/master/LICENSE

Well, I will release the site under MIT then.

[2096779623]

After discussion among the three of us, we decided to use CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 as the license for the Chinese translation version.

[agnostic-apollo]

Sorry, CC BY-NC-ND is not an open source license as it does not allow commercial usage and doesn't allow derivatives. Open source licenses do not restrict usage. Termux only (should) uses open source licenses.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en

https://creativecommons.org/faq/#does-my-use-violate-the-noncommercial-clause-of-the-licenses

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/357/is-the-cc-by-nd-an-open-license

https://opensource.org/osd/

Not sure why I didn't notice this before, apologies!

[2096779623]

Keep the same license as the site (MIT).

[agnostic-apollo]

Great, thanks! However, due to legal reasons and to keep an official record, I am going to need all 3 of you to comment something like "I grant @agnostic-apollo the permission to license all my previous commits till today (2023-05-30) to the https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io repo under the MIT license".

Lawyers probably use a specialized format to request permissions but I can't seem to find it from my quick search.

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/33/how-can-a-project-be-relicensed

http://www.catb.org/~esr/Licensing-HOWTO.html#changing

[licy183]

I grant @agnostic-apollo the permission to license all my previous commits till today (2023-05-30) to the https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io repo under the MIT license.

[2096779623]

I grant @agnostic-apollo the permission to license all my previous commits till today (2023-05-30) to the https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io repo under the MIT license.

[DreamOneX]

I grant @agnostic-apollo the permission to license all my previous commits till today (2023-05-30) to the https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io repo under the MIT license

[agnostic-apollo]

Thanks a lot to all 3 of you. Will work on this in next few days, writing the new homepage with pictures would take time and brain cells.

[2096779623]

@agnostic-apollo Any progress?

[agnostic-apollo]

Have been working on the site since last two weeks to update docs and on some complicated design issues. Might push changes today if I manage to complete it, otherwise monday or something.