Re: SRFI 170 & 205 and scsh licensing hga@xxxxxx 30 Jul 2020 13:51 UTC
> From: Lassi Kortela <xxxxxx@lassi.io> > Date: Thursday, July 30, 2020 8:29 AM > >> Which brings up an issue of licensing for both srfi-170.html and >> srfi-205.html. How does it make sense for the former to start with a >> MIT license, followed by an updated to include us scsh BSD license? How >> can anyone know what the first license applies to since it's a scsh >> "derivative work <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work>", not >> an /ab initio/ product of our writings. >> >> Proposal: with the addition of the above, change the licence in >> srfi-205.html, BSD is open enough, drop the MIT license in srfi-170.html. > > Arthur is the authority on this, but as far as I know: > > Every SRFI document ever published has been under the MIT License, with > no exceptions; that license is obligated by the SRFI process. I'm suggesting that the process be rethought, because the MIT license is meaningless at best for a derivative work like srfi-170.html, and soon srfi-205.html. I'm not sure if any harm can come from it's invalid assertion, given the below test that's before SRFI 170's BSD license, but I can't see any good coming from it. > This SRFI is derived from the documentation for > <a href="https://scsh.net/">scsh</a>, whose copyright notice, from > the <code>COPYING</code> file, is reprinted here: That needs a tweak because we added my and John's name to the list of authors: > [...] > Copyright (c) 2001-2003 by Michael Sperber. > Copyright (c) 2019-2020 by John Cowan and Harold Ancell. > Presumably the SRFI 170 document contains enough text from the scsh > manual that the extra BSD notice is needed to cover those parts. In US copyright law, and I assume in general now that it's harmonized with the Berne Convention, it's a derivative work > Sample implementations don't have to be under the MIT license if code is > copied from an existing source. Do we have substantial code copied from > scsh? If so, the sample implementation's source tree needs a copy of the > BSD license.... Yes; as it turns out, there's even more code from Chibi Scheme, and both use the same version of the BSD license, so we just added to the list of authors. > IMHO it would be useful to put a SPDX-License-Identifier at the top of > each source file in the sample implementation. That way it's clear which > license applies where.... I'll look into this. - Harold