> The virality of *GPL licenses as node modules has never been tested in court, so it's unclear what the ramifications are.
To clarify, if I were to release a MIT module onto github or npm or some other distribution channel which has a dependency on an GPL module checked into node_modules into git. (so it's in my code). There would have to be a court case to determine whether or not I am allowed to licence my top level code under MIT instead of being forced to use GPL because a dependency is GPL? On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 9:48 AM, Isaac Schlueter <[email protected]> wrote: > From the point of view of npm, you can use whatever license you like. > The virality of *GPL licenses as node modules has never been tested in > court, so it's unclear what the ramifications are. But you can even > publish stuff to npm with a license that says "You may not use this > for any purpose unless you send me a check for US$5000, and you may > only run it on computers that have unicorn stickers on their case." > > > What follows is strictly personal preference, and not the official > word of Node or npm or Joyent or anything else. If you disagree, > that's fine, but you probably won't convince me otherwise, nor do you > need to, because we can all coexist, and disagreement is a part of a > healthy vibrant ecosystem. > > From the point of view of isaacs the node user, I'd rather not BE that > court test test, and I care a lot about my freedom to make my code > unfree if I choose, so if your module is proprietary or copyleft of > any sort, I won't use it. If it's AGPL, not only won't I use it, but > I'll laugh at you, because the AGPL is insane. > > In my opinion, the best options are BSD, MIT, and Apache2, because > freedom is not about telling other people what to do. The BSD and MIT > licenses are functionally equivalent, but I live near Berkeley, so > that's why I use BSD instead of MIT. (I used to use MIT for > everything before moving to the East Bay, because I grew up in New > England.) > > Apache2 has much more thorough coverage of patents and other IP stuff, > but I dislike it because it's so long and tedious, and I distrust long > legal documents for the same reason that I distrust large programs. > You should use it if you care about patent issues, or if you like pink > feathers. > > > On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 6:21 AM, Nuno Job <[email protected]> wrote: > > What if all the top 100 npm maintainers changed everything in npm to gpl? > > Would it still be poison then? > > That would never ever happen, Nuno, you know that :) I do personally > think that the GPL is a blight on a programming community, and I love > that Node is much more OSS than free-as-in-beards. > > But yeah, it's the author's prerogative. (You could still use > previous versions that were released under the free licenses.) > > > Ps. Another topic of discussion would be how the only way to make money > in > > open source is support. > > Well, you and I both make money in open source, and not just by doing > support. > > -- > Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ > Posting guidelines: > https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "nodejs" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en > -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
