[annotator-dev] Proposal: License Simplification

Thu Jun 18 13:53:52 UTC 2015

On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 7:57 PM, Randall Leeds <tilgovi at hypothes.is> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 4:54 PM Andrew Magliozzi <andrew at finalsclub.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Hey All,
>>
>> This license simplification proposal has dropped off a little, and I
>> wanted to bring it back up.  It's going to be important, particularly if we
>> decide to pursue the Apache Foundation Incubator program.
>>
>
> Thanks, Andrew.
>

Yeah, much thanks, Drew! I didn't want to be the only one banging this
drum. ;)

>
>
>>
>> Below is a list of all Annotator contributors (according to GitHub).  If
>> you see your handle on that list, please try to chime in on this topic.
>> Note: the closer you are to the top, the more your opinion matters!
>>
>
> I'm a strong +1 on switching the license. I will note that we should be
> careful about "the more your opinion matters". While people near the top
> may be influential in the project community, ultimately we cannot relicense
> the work of other people without their permission.
>

I think "getting permission" to relicense is probably what we should focus
the conversation on.

One way to come at this is to post a GitHub issue which mentions each of
these people and asks, simply (+ some explanatory ephemera):
 - Are you OK re-licensing your contributions to Annotator under the Apache
License 2.0?

My guess is most folks won't actually care. If there is debate, we can move
it back to the mailing list per-issue raised.

The goal being that we get a reference-able record of +1's from each of
these folks--or know who we haven't heard from.

We could try and do this over email, but the location would be less
"permanent" and harder to follow / track / reference later.

FWIW, this is how Twitter did it when they changed the Bootstrap license
prior to 3.0 shipping. It worked well enough (I'd forgotten I'd even had
patches in Bootstrap :-P), and didn't seem to take terribly long.

Sound like a plan?

I'm happy to start the issue, but since I'm not a project owner it might
look odd / less official.

Cheers!
Benjamin
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