TNoodle licensing

[Jeremy Fleischman]

Hey all,

Daniel recently asked Leyan about using https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/tree/master/tnoodle-android for an android app. I want people to be able to do this. I don't know that I want people to be able to charge for programs that make use of it. Does anybody here know about software licenses?

Thanks!

Jeremy

[Lucas Garron]

GPL and MIT are pretty standard.

No matter what, you should ask carefully about permission from Shuang Chen, and probably from Clément. I think things will be much more sensible if you forbid charging for the app, although GPL might be overkill (forcing people to share the source).

Also, we haven't had a contributor agreement.

»Lucas Garron

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[Jeremy Fleischman]

I want to move forward with this. I'm actually inclined to go with the GPL, if only because it seems easier to move from GPL to MIT, rather than the other way around. Where does the license actually have to go? Is it sufficient to put it on the github README.md? What's the purpose of contributor agreements?

If we're going to go to the effort of making our license clear, I think we need to make sure that we're obeying the licenses of all the code/things tnoodle uses. With this in mind, I've just pushed some changes to cubing/tnoodle that remove a good amount of things that don't belong in tnoodle. https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/blob/master/lib/libraries is a list of everything 3rd party that has gone into tnoodle, I'll try to go through the list this weekend and make sure they're all ok for us to be using.

[Daniel Ciao]

Hi Jeremy,

I found this on GitHub's support website (https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing):

Most people place their license text in a file named LICENSE.txt (or LICENSE.md) in the root of the repository.

As long as your intention is clear, you can place your license information wherever you like. Some projects only include a descriptive line in the project's README (*e.g.*, "This projected is licensed under the terms of the MIT license."). However, to avoid any potential ambiguity, it's best to include the license file with your project as well.

GitHub also hosts a website that helps choosing a license: http://choosealicense.com/

Daniel

[Lucas Garron]

I would strongly vote for MIT if we can get agreement on it.

I'm tired of people writing well-intentioned timers with stupidly bad scrambles.

An MIT license means they can pretty much use TNoodle scrambles no matter what they're doing. I don't expect anyone to go off and make a ridiculous profit based mainly on the quality of scramblers, so I don't see much to lose.

»Lucas Garron

[Jeremy Fleischman]

I understand where you're coming from, and I have the exact same frustration as you.

However, I am also frustrated by the proliferation of $1 cubing apps out there. That's not the sort of community I want to participate in. I want more people to do exactly what Daniel Ciao is doing with plustimer.

If someone has a legitimate reason the GPL doesn't work for them, I would like to have a discussion with them and see why. If they have a compelling reason, then I'd be completely open to us moving to MIT for them.

Does my thinking sound reasonable to you, Lucas? I honestly think we have an opportunity here to change to community's view towards software. It seems to me that once we go MIT, the cat it out of the bag. I'd like to strong-arm people into talking to us before we do such a thing. How about a phrase like "TNoodle is open source, and we hope that your project using it can be too! If that really isn't an option for you, please contact wca-scrambler and maybe we can figure something out".

[Lucas Garron]

That quote for the README sounds good to me.

»Lucas Garron