Add a license

[Bad3r]

Hi there 👋
Thanks for the awesome project! could you please add a license to the repo such as MIT or AGPL?
https://choosealicense.com/

[Joly0]

Hm, i am not 100% sure it is as easy now to simply add a license, as there have been other contributors (like myself) which might need to approve the change of a license.
But other than that i think a license might be useful

[Bad3r]

@Joly0, the repo has no license. That means the creator owns all rights. You contributing to it without any given rights by the creator does not give you permission to copy or modify the code.

Based on my very limited legal understanding, the creator @damienvanrobaeys is the sole right holder and has complete control over the code unless there are dependencies with conflicting licenses.

[Joly0]

Hm, i am not sure about that one, as i have contributed code to this project which i have copyright on, i have rights on if and which license this project should use if its decided to add one.

If the project actually had a license and @damienvanrobaeys decided to change the license to another one, all contributors would have to agree on that aswell.

[Bad3r]

Hm, i am not sure about that one, as i have contributed code to this project which i have copyright on, i have rights on if and which license this project should use if its decided to add one.

If the project actually had a license and @damienvanrobaeys decided to change the license to another one, all contributors would have to agree on that aswell.

Let's say the owner said anyone is welcome to contribute but they hold the copy wright completely to the code. In that case you won't have claim to your contribution if you contribute as the license directly sates so. Having no license is the same thing.

It's the same as if someone owns a house and you decided to build a deck on it and the owner welcomed it. If the owner decides to sell the house you have no ownership unless there was an agreement that stated so.

Changing license also depends on what license was first available.

[Joly0]

https://opensource.guide/legal/

Quote: "If you don’t apply an open source license, everybody who contributes to your project also becomes an exclusive copyright holder of their work."

I have a copyright on my work in this project, not the owner.

I have asked several people who should have knowledge about licensing and copyright for open source software and they all agree, i have the copyright on my work and i have the right to decide if and which license this project should have.

[Joly0]

@damienvanrobaeys What do you think about this? A license might be really useful and important tbh, but i think we need @galeksandrp on this aswell

[damienvanrobaeys]

Hi, sorry for the delay, i was a but busy with work.
I will update the full project
I will also add a licence.

[galeksandrp]

+1 for adding a license.

[Joly0]

Btw, because the licence thing was not 100% clear yet, i have asked gpt4o about the situation. I did ask gpt3 back when this topic came up first, but gpt3 doesnt have enough knowledge to answer this question, but it seems like gpt4o improved on that end. (And yes, i know gpt4o is not a lawyer, but i think we can all agree, that its quite good with its answers and should be correct with its assumptions regarding this topic)

So here are some of the answers gpt4o gave me:

You own the copyright to the code you wrote and contributed. Copyright ownership arises automatically upon creation, and you, as the author of the new code, hold the rights to your contributions.

The original author can add a license to the repository. If they add a license that covers past contributions as well, the terms of that license would apply to all code in the repository, including your contributions. However, the author cannot retroactively impose a license on your contributions without your consent. Ideally, the original author should obtain explicit permission from all contributors before applying a new license to the entire codebase.

If the repository owner unilaterally adds a license, it is courteous and often necessary to notify and seek agreement from all contributors. If you disagree with the license chosen, you can request that your contributions be removed or negotiate terms.

But so far, the main contributors agreed on adding a license.

• @galeksandrp has approved (though not sure if he is fine with any license)
• @samnorr added some code on my fork and is fine with any license added to the repo. Quote:

No concerns from me - I am fine with whatever licence is decided.

• From my side, i am fine with most of the licenses, that are usually used in open-source projects, though i would prefer the GNU GPLv3 license or the GNU LGPLv3 license to be used.
• Also there are @TitanDeploy and @Kevinvangaalen91 who both have now contributed code to the project, but havent given any information about licensing. Although their work is minimal (basically just fixing typos), i am not sure if their agreement is needed aswell, but as they didnt contribute any real code, i would say no.