Switched to Apache2 license, added README, removed useless file.

[AbigailBuccaneer]

Is everybody okay with this? As far as I'm aware, AdvDuplicator's license wasn't discussed, but this is necessary for the workshop. There are some other people we need to ping, @Kadah (formerly TAD2020) is the principal author, @AT-Kenny and has also contributed code to this repository but not agreed to the Wiremod license change.

[Kadah]

I am TAD2020, I just go by this mostly now. The license has been the same as Wiremod since the early days, GPLv3. There is a LICENSE file in the root directory you must have lover looked.

You cannot relicense the code under a different one without wholly owning the rights to it, or, in this case, getting written permission from all authors, which would be impossible at this point given that it was part of Wiremod and we've had at least 2 or 3 losses of commit histories.

[AbigailBuccaneer]

It's been decided (see wiremod/wire#303) that Wiremod would change from GPLv3 to Apache2, with a note in the LICENSE file that the few contributors we've been unable to reach can contact us at any time if they're not happy with it.

We entirely forgot to discuss AdvDuplicator, but I assumed that if Wiremod's license was changing, AdvDuplicator's would too.

As we've now remembered to contact you, are you okay with a switch to the Apache2 license?

[Anticept]

@Kadah

We understand the small intricacies, so we have made reasonable efforts to contact all contributors to wiremod. Those that we cannot locate can contact us if they can prove who they are, as evidenced by placement in the license file.

A question is, how do YOU stand on changing to the Apache 2 license?

[TomyLobo]

yeah the proof part is important... gonna get a bunch of trolls otherwise

[Kadah]

As we've now remembered to contact you

Forgot about me? I like only ran the project for about the first 3 years :P

I didn't know till about 10 minutes ago that this was an issue with Workshop as the only part of the whole discussion I was aware of till just now was entirely this one post and it didn't elude to that at all.

We understand the small intricacies, so we have made reasonable efforts to contact all contributors to wiremod.

I've actually had to deal with far worse open source project re-licensing with a much large project involving more people, some of who we could not have contact with for complicated legal reasons (not that we would want to otherwise). We had a couple lawyers on staff, which was helpful, but in the end re-licensing was a non-option and rebase and rewrite large sections of code we couldn't re-license in sections. That was years ago and we're only recently mostly finished with the portable stuff. Something small like Wiremod should be easier though, specially with relative lack of drama it seems to have.

A question is, how do YOU stand on changing to the Apache 2 license?

I don't think I've ever used the Apache 2 license before, usually its MIT, or LGPL if I have to. I'm partial to MIT, its what Lua is under.

Gonna try catching up on the other thread tonight and comment there.

[TomyLobo]

I didn't forget you, dude. Just didn't know your current github name. jetbeard, on the other hand, the jerk, totally forgot you despite knowing your name

(j/k we all love you)

[Kadah]

I rescind my statements. Many of you have me on steam and/or have one of my many emails addresses (or could guess them), or could have messaged me through the forum email. So you guys didn't even try to contact me till a week after everything was over? What the heck? :/

[TomyLobo]

oh, you're correct, I do have you on steam I totally forgot about that. None of us meant to exclude you from any decision making process. On the contrary, this whole license debate kinda lacked the debate character I would have expected from it. It was pretty much everyone agreeing and no one challenging the license Anticept and I picked or the reason for it. I you have an opinion on the matter, I'd love to hear it. Always good to know when I'm wrong.

Here's the gist of our rationale:

• The workshop license requires sub-licensing, so GPL and LGPL are off the table, because these are always direct license agreements with the copyright holder(s). I would have loved to at least keep LGPL (which is why I asked Nebual to include it in the original poll among the git-listed devs)
• Plan A was to keep GPL and ask Valve to offer us a compatible license, possibly with the advocacy of Garry. Valve isn't responding and Garry insisted on being a douche instead, so that plan failed. In a recent blog post, he called us out for still not releasing through Workshop.
• Apache 2.0 explicitly allows sub-licensing and even shares some wording with the workshop license (to the point where I suspect they might be licenses of common descent)
• As Anticept put it, Apache 2.0 is BSD with better wording :)

[AbigailBuccaneer]

While I would've rather had MIT (and I have to say I'm a teeny tiny bit disappointed that we didn't use it) I think there's not much value in arguing about which license we should use, and any extensive debate would've been a bit pointless.

While I do definitely see the value in Wiremod and AdvDuplicator having the same license (and they have done since inception) it's not strictly necessary. @Kadah, if you'd be happier with a different license I suspect we can do that (though it might be a bit of a hassle).

[Anticept]

@Kadah The whole process of tracking down people and contacting was arduous. I suspect you were mistakenly overlooked since you haven't comitted anything in forever. ;P. We really want to get this on the workshop, so you should click the "merge pull request" button!

Anyways, again, we chose apache 2 because it is very clear in it's wording, and is as close to the GPL as possible while still remaining compatible with the workshop.

Seriously everyone, read the apache 2 license. It has one page of definitions, but the actual legal license part is only a page itself. Brief and concise.

[AbigailBuccaneer]

@TomyLobo's just informed me that @Kadah is also a large contributor to Wiremod itself, as well as AdvDuplicator. Sorry, I didn't know. I've always just thought of you as 'The AdvDuplicator guy'.

@Kadah, the ball's in your court. Obviously we can't be doing any of this until you give the okay (or say otherwise).

[Kadah]

@TomyLobo's just informed me that @Kadah is also a large contributor to Wiremod itself, as well as AdvDuplicator. Sorry, I didn't know. I've always just thought of you as 'The AdvDuplicator guy'.

[insert obligatory you_must_be_new_here.jpg meme] Though loosing the SVN history three times kinda made it hard to tell that I was 2nd in number of commits to Tomy years for after I was active. For all I know it could still be the case, but I lost my copies of the repo stats long ago. :V

I'm still surprised that you guys hadn't gotten it on Workshop already considering I was asking about it early last year. Geez, you guys are lazier than me. :P

Apache 2.0 is fine by me. It just put me in a really pissy mood last night.

I think we went with GPLv2 back then cause it was the "standard" during that era. I think it was added when we had to move the SVN to a sf.net, before that it wasn't explicitly licensed for what I know.

If you want me to contact Erkle, I have him on Steam and he actually signs in once in a while. Though he was only active for like the first 3 months of the project, most of the core lib code is likely still his (not to mention the general base API and methods).

I tried to get back in to gmod stuff a couple times in the last year, but there were wiremod repo specific issues that weren't resolved, and combined with the generally bad support GIT has on windows (do not tell me otherwise, plus this is not the place for it), so I gave up.

[AbigailBuccaneer]

Sorry about all this - I completely understand how we managed to piss you off with all this. We only contacted people in the Git history, which is how we managed to miss out the giants whose shoulders we stand on. :)

You are completely 100% right about Erkle - we haven't contacted him either! If you could contact him that would be brilliant (and legally necessary).

If you'd like to get back into Wiremod development, now seems to be a pretty good time - I've just started again, and RevoluPowered was thinking of doing the same. And GMod 13 is very slick and Garry's made some eminently sensible decisions on the code side, which was pleasing to find out.

[Anticept]

@Kadah I doubt Erkle will have an issue with it. I would appreciate his feedback, but given that we really want this on the workshop, I hope he understands if we go-ahead.