Please specify the license for this package

[tarsius]

Could you please specify the license used for this package?

Assuming that you want to release under "the GPL v3 or any later version", the best way to do that would be to add this permission statement to the library header:

;; This file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
;; any later version.

;; This file is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
;; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
;; GNU General Public License for more details.

;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
;; along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Also consider adding a LICENSE file containing the text of the GPL-3. You could add just that file without also adding the above persmission statement, but if you do that, then the "or (at your option) any later version" bit won't be known. So I recommend that you add both the actual license and the permission statement.

If you find the permission statement to be too noisy, then you could instead add one of these following lines to the header. If you do that, then it becomes more important to also add the LICENSE file - a judge might decide that such a line by itself is not sufficient. Still, adding just such a line is better than not specifing the license at all.

;; License: GNU General Public License version 3, or (at your option) any later version
;; License: GNU General Public License version 3, or any later version
;; License: GNU GPL version 3, or (at your option) any later version
;; License: GPL version 3, or (at your option) any later version
;; License: GPL version 3, or any later version
;; License: GPL v3, or (at your option) any later version
;; License: GPL v3, or any later version
;; License: GPL-3+

[tarsius]

Friendly ping!

Sorry for being pushy, but it looks like Richard Stallman is going to request the removal of all unlicensed packages from Melpa in less than two weeks. If enough maintainers soon act in response to requests such as this one, then I might be able to convince him not to make that mistake, giving the remaining authors more time to act.

I think it would be a bit mistake to remove the unlicensed packages without giving maintainers enough time to act as that has the potential of causing a lot of bad blood.

So if you do have the time to do it now, then please do so. It would buy other maintainers more time.

Thanks a lot!

Ps: I am also contacting the maintainers of some packages that are not being distributed on Melpa. If your package is one of those, then please specify the license soon anyway.

Pps: You don't have to use the "GPLv3" or "GPLv3, or (at your option) any later version". You could also use another license that is compatible to the GPLv3, such as the MIT license. Please note that "the MIT license" is ambigious. To avoid that ambiguity you should put this text in a file named LICENSE.

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

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.

Please also consider adding the same text to each library header. Only adding a line ;; License: MIT to library headers should be avoided because of the mentioned ambiguity.

[tarsius]

Friendly ping!

[Wilfred]

Sadly it doesn't seem to be under a well-defined license. Looking at the docs via Wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20010308225756/http://home.kscable.com:80/mattcampbell/rmoo-doc.html

There's a source RPM in there, rmoo-1.1-1.src.rpm. That RPM has a .spec that just says:

Summary: MOO client for Emacs
Name: rmoo
Version: 1.1
Release: 1
Copyright: distributable

There's also a file called LICENSE in the tarball inside the RPM. That contains the following:

$Id: LICENSE,v 1.1 1999/12/27 00:46:45 mattcamp Exp $

The following is an email I received from Ron Tapia, original author
of RMOO, when I contacted him regarding my modifications to the code.
I'm treating this as the license for RMOO, since he didn't give it a
formal license (like GPL or BSD).  The message is unedited, including
a quotation of my original message, which explains my motivation for
taking on this project.  In keeping with Ron's request, I have been
using the Revision Control System (RCS) to track my changes to the
code.  The RCS logs are at the bottom of the source files.

Matthew Campbell

--

From: Ron Tapia <tapia@nmia.com>
To: Matthew Campbell <mattcamp@feist.com>
Subject: Re: RMOO
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 00:35:42 -0700 (MST)

Hi,

I haven't been actively working on rmoo (or MOO'ing for that matter) for
several years.

You are welcome to extend the code however you like. All that I ask is
that it be made reasonably clear in the source (and anywhere else
appropriate) what code I wrote and what code/changes you're responsible
for. 

Cheers,

Ron
Hagbard@LambdaMOO

==
On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Matthew Campbell wrote:

> Hello Ron,
> 
> I found a copy of RMOO, your MOO client for Emacs, at
> ftp://tecfa.unige.edu/pub/software/unix/mud-clients/rmoo.tar.  It seems
> quite old (dated October 9, 1994), and I have found a bug in it.  Have you
> released a newer version, or have you quit working on it?
> 
> The main reason I am writing to you about RMOO is that I have extended it to
> support Emacspeak, a speech-enabling subsystem for Emacs.  Through
> Emacspeak, blind users can use Emacs, and Unix in general, and get the
> speech feedback that they need.  So I have wrote an extension to RMOO that
> makes it speak when it is run in conjuction with Emacspeak.  The bug I
> mentioned earlier was in rmoo.el, in the function rmoo-handle-text.  The
> line which should have read:
> 
> (run-hooks 'rmoo-handle-text-hooks)
> 
> actually read:
> 
> (run-hooks rmoo-handle-text-hooks)
> 
> This prevented my extension from working, because it adds itself as a hook
> in rmoo-handle-text-hooks.  So rather than releasing my extension and a
> patch for RMOO, I thought it would be easier to put RMOO--with the bug
> fixed--along with my Emacspeak extension in my own rmoo.tar.gz file.  In
> addition to fixing the bug and adding Emacspeak support, I changed the
> default RMOO directory from ~/emacs/rmoo to ~/rmoo to make installation
> easier.  I updated your README file to reflect what I had done and expanded
> it to include a "Getting Started" section for new users.  And I recently
> converted the README file to HTML.
> 
> If you are still developing and maintaining RMOO, I am willing to give you
> my code.  If not, may I take over the project?  Who will own the copyright?
> (I noticed that none of your files have a copyright in them anywhere.)
> 
> Thank you,
> Matt Campbell

That's a shame, because this package seems to be more featureful than the other Emacs MUD clients (mu.el and its derivative mud.el).

[Wilfred]

... and now I've noticed that LICENSE is included in the git repo here too. Woops.

Looking further, I don't think @toddsundsted is the author of this code. Looking at emacspeak-rmoo:

;; emacspeak-rmoo.el: Speech-enabling extensions to RMOO
;; Copyright 1999-2000 by Matthew Campbell
;; Some code adapted from an extension written by Amit Patel
;; <amitp@cs.stanford.edu>.  However, please contact Matt regarding
;; any questions or problems you have with this software.
;; This is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

It looks to me like the original code was by Ron Tapia, who just wanted attribution, and Matthew Campbell has licensed his bits under GPL. The GPL may not be compatible in this case, but IANAL.

[tarsius]

Nothing we can do then.