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⚖️ get real about license guidance in contribution guidelines #642

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DerekNonGeneric opened this issue Dec 20, 2023 · 3 comments
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@DerekNonGeneric
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The contribution guidelines surrounding licensing are too simplistic and unclear.

.github/CONTRIBUTING.md

Lines 77 to 79 in 77515ff

Contributions to this project are [released][contrib-license] to the public
under the project’s open source license. The license for a project is located in
a file named [`LICENSE.md`][] in the root directory of the repository.

This is also not the whole story about what we currently do. Expand and clarify.

@DerekNonGeneric
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DerekNonGeneric commented Dec 20, 2023

i vaguely remember writing more clear guidance, but what we have here is not what i remember writing.

i remember writing that all of our licenses need to have provenance* from the spdx/license-list-data project repo (specifically the "text" dir).

all of our licenses coming from this dir will include proper file extensions (.txt) and in the case where we have multiple licenses (e.g., dual-licensed MIT OR Apache-2.0), we should create a dir named LICENSE and stick the license files in there doing away w/ the concept of a LICENSE.md file that is not actually a real license since having that as we currently do unintentionally trips up stuff like GitHub web UI causing it to be unsure what to make of this non-standard license file, which is actually more of an explanation (and one i do not even like haha).

@DerekNonGeneric
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DerekNonGeneric commented Dec 20, 2023

on a separate note, something that deserves clarification (perhaps in our ADRs) — we should explain why we are dual-licensing our projects like this and i admit that this is currently on a very shaky foundation (obviated by mozilla-spidermonkey/cacheirhealthreport#40).

i actually am not sure whether this would be consistent w/ what was requested in the original issue that prompted the re-licensing of our projects: mozilla-spidermonkey/cacheirhealthreport#39

DerekNonGeneric added a commit to DerekNonGeneric/openinf-github-dotrepo that referenced this issue Dec 20, 2023
Resolves: OpenINFGH-642

Signed-off-by: Derek Lewis <dereknongeneric@open.inf.is>
DerekNonGeneric added a commit that referenced this issue Dec 20, 2023
This refactoring also replaces the original license files w/ fresh
copies from the SPDX corpus.

Refs: https://github.com/spdx/license-list-data/blob/main/text/MIT.txt
Refs: https://github.com/spdx/license-list-data/blob/main/text/Apache-2.0.txt

We are now using the correct file extension (`txt`), which is ongoing
effort to not have _any_ files w/o an extension in any of our repos.

Addresses: #642 (comment)

The MIT license has also had its entire header bowdlerized like the
Rust project. This is to prevent a potential inaccurate attribution.

Refs: rust-lang/rust@2a8807e

PR-URL: #643
Signed-off-by: Derek Lewis <dereknongeneric@open.inf.is>
@DerekNonGeneric
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DerekNonGeneric commented Dec 22, 2023

The final piece of unaddressed feedback raised in #643 will now be tracked in this issue as a comment (this one, actually):

Seems like we should move all this to our README since it does seem relevant…

See bottom section: https://github.com/OpenINF/.github/blob/main/README.md#contributing

## License

This project is dual licensed under the following licenses:

- Apache License, Version 2.0 ([LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) or
  <http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0>)
- MIT license ([LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or
  <http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>)

You may choose to use either license.

### Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be
dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

The actual request is for another separate refactoring, but this one would be restoring the contents of LICENSE.md file to a more-appropriate location; we were thinking about the README.md file & after double-checking that still looks right to me (change of plans now seeing as how all of our package README files already standardized what this section should contain and we will not deviate from that at all in our README.md).


This way of laying out the section of CONTRIBUTION.md — w/ the License heading to also contain a Contribution subheading — is what i would imagine a more verbose section in a CONTRIBUTING.md would offer w/ its more holistic explanation…

N.B., same as our previous ⚖️♻️ — the PR resolving the issue raised in this comment will still not handle the core issue here. Leave it open.

@DerekNonGeneric DerekNonGeneric added documentation Improvements or additions to documentation wip Issues and PRs that are still a work in progress markdown An issue or PR related to Markdown claimed labels Dec 22, 2023
DerekNonGeneric added a commit to DerekNonGeneric/openinf-github-dotrepo that referenced this issue Dec 22, 2023
Additional guidance on license file sourcing and location to be
provided, amongst license selection, and more!

Refs: OpenINF#642 (comment)
Signed-off-by: Derek Lewis <dereknongeneric@open.inf.is>
DerekNonGeneric added a commit to DerekNonGeneric/openinf-github-dotrepo that referenced this issue Dec 23, 2023
Additional guidance on license file sourcing and location to be
provided, amongst license selection, and more!

Refs: OpenINF#642 (comment)
Signed-off-by: Derek Lewis <dereknongeneric@open.inf.is>
DerekNonGeneric added a commit to DerekNonGeneric/openinf-github-dotrepo that referenced this issue Dec 26, 2023
Additional guidance on license file sourcing and location to be
provided, amongst license selection, and more!

Refs: OpenINF#642 (comment)
Signed-off-by: Derek Lewis <dereknongeneric@open.inf.is>
OpenINFbot added a commit to OpenINF/openinf.github.io that referenced this issue Jan 9, 2024
Refs: OpenINF/.github#642

Signed-off-by: OpenINF Bot <132791922+openinfbot@users.noreply.github.com>
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