Change license from AGPL3 to GPL3
magicus opened this issue · 29 comments
TL;DR
If you have been pinged here, you have contributed code to Artemis. If you agree with changing license to GPL3 for your contributions to Artemis, please type "I agree" in a comment below.
Background
Due to historic reasons, Artemis was created with the same license as Legacy, the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL3). This is a slightly modified version of GPL3, which prohibits public use on a server without releasing the source code. This extra clause is not relevant for Artemis, but it will still make the source code license incompatible with GPL3, a much more common license for Minecraft mods.
I propose that we change the Artemis license from AGPL3 to the normal GNU General Public License v3 (GPL3).
Since the code currently present in the Artemis repo was contributed under the AGPL3 license, all contributors must agree to a change. If an author does not agree, or does not reply, we might be forced to remove those commits that said author have provided.
Note that this change do not apply to other Wynntils software, such as Hades and Athena that are running on the Wynntils servers. They will keep using AGPL.
Process
If you have been pinged in this message, please type "I agree" (or, "I do not agree") in a comment below. An Artemis maintainer will then update the list below based on the responses.
If and when all authors have agreed, we will re-license the project. If a few individual authors do not agree or does not reply, the Artemis development team might decide to remove those contributions and still go ahead with the re-license, keeping only code from those who agree.
Contributors
Here is a complete list of all contributors to the Artemis repo, as provided by Github.
Legend: ❓ = has not replied, ✅ = has accepted, ❌ = has not accepted
| User | Commits | Approval |
|---|---|---|
| @kristofbolyai | 875 commits | ✅ |
| @magicus | 639 commits | ✅ |
| @Incompleteusern | 169 commits | ❓ |
| @DonkeyBlaster | 95 commits | ✅ |
| @P0keDev | 69 commits | ❓ |
| @DevScyu | 36 commits | ❓ |
| @san7890 | 27 commits | ❓ |
| @Rafii2198 | 20 commits | ✅ |
| @Mcrtin | 20 commits | ✅ |
| @HighCrit | 16 commits | ❓ |
| @JamieCallan117 | 15 commits | ✅ |
| @HalcyonSuoh | 9 commits | ❓ |
| @TomaSajt | 6 commits | ✅ |
| @byBackfish | 6 commits | ✅ |
| @jh-devv | 5 commits | ✅ |
| @re-vc | 4 commits | ✅ |
| @joshieman06 | 4 commits | ✅ |
| @DalwynWasTaken | 4 commits | ❓ |
| @mbnkwm | 3 commits | ✅ |
| @ShadowShift | 3 commits | ❓ |
| @ekgame | 3 commits | ✅ |
| @coehlrich | 3 commits | ✅ |
| @McPlayHD | 2 commits | ✅ |
| @CringeAura | 2 commits | ❓ |
| @Zatzou | 2 commits | ❓ |
| @Jimmy-sheep | 2 commits | ✅ |
| @ENORMOUZ | 2 commits | ✅ |
| @bricefrisco | 2 commits | ✅ |
| @YouSoPugly | 2 commits | ❓ |
| @xCykrix | 1 commit | ✅ |
| @atiedebee | 1 commit | ❓ |
| @TUsama | 1 commit | ✅ |
| @Ldude162 | 1 commit | ✅ |
| @Kepler-17c | 1 commit | ❓ |
| @cmkohnen | 1 commit | ✅ |
| @obj-obj | 1 commit | ❓ |
| @iwei20 | 1 commit | ❓ |
| @DevChromium | 1 commit | ✅ |
| @KaspianDev | 1 commit | ✅ |
Are we sure the GPL can apply here?
- https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPluginsInNF - Minecraft being the "nonfree program", Wynntils being the "GPL covered plug-in"
- https://blog.modrinth.com/p/licensing-guide - section "Copyleft license" suggests use of LGPL-3.0 over GPL-3.0
Are we sure the GPL can apply here?
@iwei20 That is a relevant question. I just wanted to get rid of the Affero part, and did not stop to think if GPL would be suitable.
It does indeed seem that GPL is not a suitable license for Minecraft mods, and that LGPL is required. I'll confer with the rest of the Wynntils Dev Team about how to proceed.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention!
Are we sure the GPL can apply here?
@iwei20 That is a relevant question. I just wanted to get rid of the Affero part, and did not stop to think if GPL would be suitable.
It does indeed seem that GPL is not a suitable license for Minecraft mods, and that LGPL is required. I'll confer with the rest of the Wynntils Dev Team about how to proceed.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention!
I'd say GPL is suitable
GPL is totally fine for plugins/mods, even Bukkit API uses GPL.
At the very least, that is apparently subject to legal debate and uncertainty. Using LGPL would remove any uncertainty about the legality.
This is superseded by #1970