[Proposal] Putting a known License on this project.

[nielsbasjes]

Hi,

This project is used by many because it is a great implementation.

What I found is that in many places people are jumping through strange hoops because the license of this project historically had a "no evil" clause.

A few years ago this was changed to "Public Domain" which as a first impression sounds good.

However I found that some really relevant projects (like Spring) are not changing from the previous created hoops because they state (Quote) This is not a recognised open source licence.

See spring-projects/spring-boot#41201 (comment)

While the licence was changed in 2022, it now simply states that it is "Public Domain". This is not a recognised open source licence so, unfortunately, we and many other projects in the Java ecosystem do not feel that they can safely depend upon it.

So my request is simple: Please attach an existing / known open license that matches how you see things.

I had a look at

• This list https://opensource.org/licenses?categories=international%2Cpopular-strong-community
• What Apache projects can use https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html

From my standpoint something that is in the "Category A" list for the ASF would be great.

So something like the Apache Licence 2.0, one of the BSD or MIT variants mentioned on the Apache site would make things a lot better.

Looking at the projects I know and use; my preference would be the Apache Licence 2.0.
(Which is what I use for all of the projects I open sourced).

Thanks for making this project!

Niels Basjes

[stleary]

@nielsbasjes This question comes up from time to time, so I will leave the issue open for now.
The code author, @douglascrockford, gets to set the license. In this case, the choice was "Public Domain".

[johnjaylward]

I'll Leave this here as well as it's a good write-up:

https://open-innovation-projects.org/blog/open-source-software-vs-public-domain-understanding-the-key-differences-and-implications-for-developers

A key point from the article:

While open source software is free in terms of cost and allows for modifications, public domain content goes a step further, with no restrictions at all.

Anyone saying that Public Domain "isn't free enough", or doesn't provide a proper license, does not, IMO, understand public domain. It literally means you can do anything you want with it, commercial or otherwise.

Also, Duck Duck Go AI, gave this answer for the question "what is a closest open source license to US Public domain":

The closest open source license to the U.S. Public Domain is the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which allows creators to waive all their copyright and related rights, effectively placing their works in the public domain. This enables others to freely use, modify, and distribute the works without restrictions.

@stleary , It may be worthwhile to update the license to read something like:

Public Domain. If a full license text is required, see the CC0 license model https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/ or the "Unlicense" https://opensource.org/license/unlicense

[johnjaylward]

also note that there is a Public Domain "Unlicense" https://opensource.org/license/unlicense

[nielsbasjes]

From my perspective I do not care about the exact licence variant. My primary concern is that the major open source projects that need this functionality (like from Spring and ASF) can stop jumping through hoops to avoid licensing issues.

The mentioned "Unlicense" is on the Category A list from the ASF so that sounds good to me.

Perhaps @wilkinsona can indicate what would work for the Spring projects?

[wilkinsona]

Unfortunately, I cannot do so definitively as I am not a lawyer.

My lay person's understanding is that saying that something is "Public Domain" is insufficient from a copyright perspective. The Unlicense addresses that by including a copyright waiver in the license, hence its position on the ASF's category A list.

As things stand, I think this project falls into this section of the ASF's policy. It notes that "determining whether the copyright in a work has expired may be non-trivial and may vary between jurisdictions".

[nielsbasjes]

If this project gets a license mentioned in the Category A list from the ASF I would expect that to be acceptable for inclusion into Spring also.
@wilkinsona Knowing both you and I are both not lawyers; Do you agree? Is there a way you can check?

[wilkinsona]

Yes, I agree. A license on the Category A list from the ASF would be acceptable. Anything that isn't a recognised license (as is currently the case) would require us to go through legal to seek their approval which will take more time than I have available.

[nielsbasjes]

@douglascrockford Request: Can you please change the legal speak of the license of this software from the legally not recognized "Public Domain" to the legally recognized "The Unlicense" https://opensource.org/license/unlicense ?

From my perspective this still says the same thing "Public Domain", just in a form that lawyers accept as something they know.

So the only (and very desirable) effect is that this will make the license of this project one listed on the Category A list of allowed licenses from the ASF and thus the developers of other projects (like Spring and ASF) can use this again.