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move licensing to HISTORY

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Thomas Levine 2016-02-29 04:34:20 +00:00
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HISTORY
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@ -104,6 +104,58 @@ See the help for the full list.
urchin -h
### Copyrights
Some people had contributed to Urchin but had not been added to the copyright
notice. I have updated the copyright notice to include everyone whom I believe
to have contributed patches.
### License
I, Thomas Levine, have switched the previous BSD-style license for the Afferro
Gnu Public License (AGPL) after determining that the added restrictions in the
AGPL shouldn't have any practical legal consequences for people who want to
use Urchin. I did not get approval from the other authors as I believe the
licenses to be compatible. Here are the considerations that I considered.
#### History
ScraperWiki owns the original version of Urchin (Thomas Levine did the early
work as part of his work for ScraperWiki.) and originally licensed it under a
BSD-style license with the advertising clauses removed. (This makes it a
"2-clause BSD license", similar to the FreeBSD license.) We had the previous
license just because that's what ScraperWiki put on everything.
Other people made changes after this original ScraperWiki version. As of
January 2016, they are just Thomas Levine (when he wasn't working for
ScraperWiki) and Michael Klement.
The 2-clause BSD license grants pretty much all rights. It says that you need
to attribute when you redistribute source code, but you don't necessarily have
to redistribute source code.
#### License compatibility
A copyleft license adds the restriction that modified versions of the code
need to be licensed under the same license. GNU licenses in particular require
that source code be released if non-source versions are released, and the
different GNU licenses differ in what how the non-source version is defined.
(The original, GPL, discusses compiled binaries, for example.) Copyleft
doesn't mean anything specific for commercial use.
Code licensed under the 2-clause BSD license can be modified and then licensed
as AGPL, because the 2-clause BSD license license allows that, but AGPL code
can't be modified as 2-clause BSD, because AGPL doesn't allow that.
Of course, if we get all of the authors to agree on it, we can always add
whatever crazy license we want, regardless of what we have already.
#### Practical differences
The distinction between the permissive 2-clause BSD license and the AGPL seem
to matter quite little in the case of Urchin.
1. Urchin is written in an interpreted language (shell), so it would be
hard to distribute usefully without providing the source code.
2. Urchin usually just runs tests; it doesn't get compiled with the rest of
the code (also because it's in shell). Thus, I think a GPL license on Urchin
wouldn't infect the code being tested.
### Source setup and teardown
setup, teardown, setup_dir, and teardown_dir are now sourced instead of
executed; they are referenced a bit like this.

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@ -11,12 +11,6 @@ https://github.com/creationix/nvm/issues/589
Documenting that people should run "env" when their tests fail might be good
enough.
Licensing and copyright
------------------------
* Reference all owners and years in the Copyright file
* Consider copyleft licenses
* Add license notices to other files if necessary
Packaging
------------
Package for package managers.
@ -39,43 +33,3 @@ Try running Urchin in Windows somehow. Interpreters include
* Git for Windows (https://git-scm.com/download/win)
* win-bash (http://win-bash.sourceforge.net/)
Consider copyleft licenses
----------
ScraperWiki owns the original version of Urchin (Thomas Levine did the early
work as part of his work for ScraperWiki.) and originally licensed it under an
MIT-style license. Other people made changes after this original ScraperWiki
version. As of January 2016, they are just Thomas Levine (when he wasn't
working for ScraperWiki) and Michael Klement.
The original license was MIT just because that's what ScraperWiki put on
everything. Should we change the license?
The MIT-style license grants pretty much all rights. It says that you need
to attribute when you redistribute source code, but you don't
necessarily have to redistribute source code.
A copyleft license adds the restriction that modified versions of the
code need to be licensed under the same license. GNU licenses in
particular require that source code be released if non-source versions are
released, and the different GNU licenses differ in what how the
non-source version is defined. (The original, GPL, discusses compiled
binaries.) Copyleft doesn't mean anything specific for commercial use.
MIT-licensed code can be modified and then licensed as GPL, because MIT
license allows that, but GPL code can't be modified as MIT, because MIT
doesn't allow that. And if we get all of the authors to agree on it, we
can always add whatever crazy license we want, regardless of what we
have already.
The distinction between MIT-style and GNU-something might matter quite little
in the case of Urchin.
1. Urchin is written in an interpreted language (shell), so it might be
hard to distribute usefully without providing the source code.
2. Urchin just runs tests; it doesn't get compiled with the rest of the
code (also because it's in shell). Thus, I think a GPL license on
Urchin wouldn't infect the code being tested.
This is as far as I have gotten with contemplating license changes. For now
we're sticking with the original MIT-style license, but it's easy to change
licenses later.