We list X11, but are actually expat...switch to X11 for consistency

TheBlueMatt commented at 10:09 am on September 3, 2014: member

Justification for this being OK:

As X11 is strictly more restrictive, and things can be relicensed under a strictly more restrictive license, we can clear up the uncertainty with this commit without needing callbacks from everyone defined under “The Bitcoin Core Developers”.

TheBlueMatt commented at 10:10 am on September 3, 2014: member

The clause here is copied from the X11 license and replaced references to the X Consortium with references to “the authors or copyright holders” as is used in the main block, which also refers to the X CONSORTIUM in the x11 license.

TheBlueMatt force-pushed on Sep 3, 2014

We list X11, but are actually expat...switch to X11 for consistency

Justification for this being OK:

As X11 is strictly more restrictive, and things can be relicensed
under a strictly more restrictive license, we can clear up the
uncertainty with this commit without needing callbacks from everyone
defined under "The Bitcoin Core Developers".

6f03fc245d

jgarzik commented at 1:04 pm on September 3, 2014: contributor

On the technical correctness front:

We are the “MIT” license according to the link given in each source file, http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php And this text matches COPYING.

On the legal correctness front:

You think license can be changed to be more restrictive, without the consent of copyright holders? Not sure where that bit of legal logic came from.

This pull request is a license change.

laanwj commented at 1:19 pm on September 3, 2014: member

Ugh, so the link is inconsistent with the license name in the files. Seems we have been dual-licensing…

jgarzik commented at 1:21 pm on September 3, 2014: contributor

The text at the link labelled “MIT” matches word-for-word the text in the COPYING file. I don’t see anything inconsistent.

jgarzik commented at 1:36 pm on September 3, 2014: contributor

NAK. This changes license text. Further, this change makes our COPYING now inconsistent with the given URL in each file.

laanwj commented at 2:38 pm on September 3, 2014: member

The terms of the X11 and MIT license are the same, but the X Consortium for its own software adds a clarification about usage of its name and trademarks

“Except as contained in this notice, the name of the X Consortium shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from the X Consortium. X Window System is a trademark of X Consortium, Inc.”

In the case of bitcoin there is no organization that protects its name or trademarks. And, thinking about it, I’m not sure how much sense it makes to change “X Consortium” liberally to “the name of the authors or copyright holders” .

So, NACK from me too. I’d vote to just keep this as it is, and enforce a consistent copyright message (without the /X11, but the same link to COPYING and http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php) for new files.

TheBlueMatt commented at 5:01 pm on September 3, 2014: member

Well we can change the header from X11, but that sounds more like a license change than this.

TheBlueMatt commented at 5:04 pm on September 3, 2014: member

@jgarzik There is no single MIT license. There are various ones. We pointed to one (MIT/X11), but had text for another (Expat, often referred to as “the” MIT license as it is the most common).

sipa commented at 5:05 pm on September 3, 2014: member

There was some IRC discus sion about this. Jeff’s point was that the name of the license doesn’t matter - the text in COPYING and the one referred to by a URL in the actual source files would have more legal value. That sounds reasonable to me, but IANAL.

luke-jr commented at 5:06 pm on September 3, 2014: member

@TheBlueMatt MIT/X11 seems pretty unambiguous to me. The newer MIT license and the X11 license have the same terms, word-for-word. The trademark clarification is not part of the license terms itself.

TheBlueMatt commented at 5:55 pm on September 3, 2014: member

Seems consensus on IRC is that changing the header text to point to the MIT/Expat in COPYING makes more sense than changing COPYING to be MIT/X11.

TheBlueMatt closed this on Sep 3, 2014

laanwj commented at 11:18 am on September 5, 2014: member

IRC consensus was to change the ‘MIT/X11’ in the headers to just ‘MIT’ (and save four bytes in the process). Sure, MIT may be ambigious, but for details about the license people should refer to the terms in COPYING or the provided link. I want to to do this at least for new files and new copyright headers.

MarcoFalke locked this on Sep 8, 2021

We list X11, but are actually expat…switch to X11 for consistency #4832