search

vboxme / Portable-VirtualBox

Portable-VirtualBox is a free and open source software tool that lets you run any operating system from a usb stick without separate installation.
Other
806 stars 234 forks source link

License issues #28

Closed rugk closed 9 years ago

rugk commented 9 years ago

At first the license you want to apply isn't explicitly added in a new text file, which is best practice.

But apart from that in some files you write that this is licensed under a CC license. However CC licenses should not be used for software. I would recommend to choose another software license for this purpose.

More information about licenses on Github: https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing/

runarbu commented 9 years ago

I totally agree. The CC license is not ideal for software. Unfortunately when this license first has been applied it is very hard to change. To change to another license we would have to get permission from everyone that has participated in the project, and that is not possible because some of them we have lost track of.

I will however add a license text file at least.

rugk commented 9 years ago

Well... in the files there it is stated that there is "one author et al.". So AFAIK he could change the license - I think to ask all "et al" isn't necessary.

; Author : Michael Meyer (michaelm_007) et al.

The email address listed there below is a bit useless too...

However of course all previous work will stay licensed under the CC license. Only the new work will be licensed under the new license. So if you want you can ask all current contributors whether and to which license you want to change.

Megachip commented 9 years ago

@rugk and he is the one which is "verschollen"

runarbu commented 9 years ago

Michael is the original developer. I have tried to reach him many times, but he is nowhere to be found.

At the human readable version of the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ ) there is a part called ShareAlike that sees "If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original."

I am not a lawyer, but as I interpret this so will any new code we produce be to "build upon the material", and would therefore also have to be CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licensed.

rugk commented 9 years ago

@runarbu Yes you're right, so only the original developer could relicense this. And if he's lost then we can't do many things, you're right. Unfortunately...