Licenses

[draje 9]

Looking through the Emby code, I noticed that a few repositories were missing licenses. It's difficult to contribute without having a license.

 

What are the licenses of the code in the following repos?

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Restart

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/emby-web-defaultskin

[ebr 14925]

Hi.  Anything that does not have an explicit license is protected under copyright.

 

We will need to review exactly which components may need specific licenses.

 

Thanks.

[kingargyle 19]

Hi.  Anything that does not have an explicit license is protected under copyright.

 

We will need to review exactly which components may need specific licenses.

 

Thanks.

 

This kind of defeats the purpose of publishing the code and repos though.  Basically if it is solely under copyright, then a person can not legally fork it or modify it beyond for personal use.   I would highly recommend at least considering a CopyLeft License like Apache or EPL where you maintain the code ownership.    Or my prefered method of licensing code to the open source community is to use BSD or MIT style licenses.

[draje 9]

Hi.  Anything that does not have an explicit license is protected under copyright.

 

We will need to review exactly which components may need specific licenses.

 

Thanks.

 

Thanks for clarifying.

 

Any chance you could note this in the repository? It's very deceptive to see full source code on GitHub only to find out that it's proprietary, copyright software.

 

Also - to which extent are forks permitted? For example, if I forked both repositories to my account, I would essentially be redistributing copyrighted code.

 

If forks are permitted - to which extent are modifications allowed?

Edited August 25, 2017 by draje

[kingargyle 19]

Thanks for clarifying.

 

Any chance you could note this in the repository? It's very deceptive to see full source code on GitHub only to find out that it's proprietary, copyright software.

 

Also - to which extent are forks permitted? For example, if I forked both repositories to my account, I would essentially be redistributing copyrighted code.

 

If forks are permitted - to which extent are modifications allowed?

 

GitHub terms of service allow you to fork the repository if they made the code public.   As for making or distributing changes, you can make changes but only for personal use, unless you contribute those changes back to the original project.  Note that I am not a member of the project team, just going off past experience.

 

 

https://help.github.com/articles/licensing-a-repository/

 

Note: If you publish your source code in a public repository on GitHub, according to the Terms of Service, other GitHub users have the right to view and fork your repository within the GitHub site. If you have already created a public repository and no longer want users to have access to it, you can make your repository private. When you convert a public repository to a private repository, existing forks or local copies created by other users will still exist. For more information, see "Making a public repository private."

Edited August 29, 2017 by kingargyle

[ebr 14925]

GitHub terms of service allow you to fork the repository if they made the code public.   As for making or distributing changes, you can make changes but only for personal use, unless you contribute those changes back to the original project. 

 

This is correct and I've highlighted an important phrase .

 

Thanks.