Re: [Repo-criteria-discuss] B2 for Gitlab?

[Mike Gerwitz]

Connor:

Sorry for my late reply; I hadn't had the time to look at a couple
things before replying.

On Fri, Jun 03, 2016 at 21:42:45 -0600, Connor Shea wrote:
> Sorry I haven't followed up in the past month, I've been busy with
> travelling and such. I wanted to provide an update on our progress so far.

Thanks for your continued work on this. :)  I continue to be pleased and
excited by GitLab's commitments.

> Our license detection is courtesy of a gem called licensee (
> https://github.com/benbalter/licensee), created by GitHub.

This seems to only check the README, LICENSE, etc files, which doesn't
make it possible to detect "or later" clauses---something that is
absolutely essential.  I'm confused why licensee even references "or
later" in its README if it can't detect that; or am I missing something?

GPLv3 and GPLv3+ are very different from both a philosophical and legal
perspective, and have strong implications for software compatibility.

> After discussing with them, we likely won't rename the MIT License to
> MIT Expat. If you insist on that, I can see about overwriting the
> decision of the licensee gem in our use of it, but I personally see it
> as unlikely that many would misinterpret the license as the X11.

Nowadays it's generally assumed that "MIT" means Expat, but I don't see
any way to resolve that ambiguity without relying on shaky assumptions.

Since the FSF has long been committed to encouraging correct use---and
rms won't skip a beat in interrupting a sentence to correct someone when
they simply say "MIT" ;)---it will probably be needed to pass that
criterion.

> As for renaming the GPLv2 and GPLv3 license options to "GPLv2 or
> later" and "GPLv3 or later", progress is definitely being made on that
> front, and we'll hopefully have a new version of the gem with that fix
> in the next couple weeks.

Great!

But as it stands today, this only recommends text for the LICENSE
file---how will "or later" be recommended to users?  That isn't part of
the license itself.

Sorry if I'm not understanding something.

> The LibreJS issue has stalled for the time being (
> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15621), but I intend to look
> into once we upgrade to the next version of Sprockets, our asset manager
> (should be within the next few months, as it's a dependency of the next
> version of Rails).

That's for the interest in this---it will be a great example for others,
and I'm personally quite excited about it.

> I'm still thinking on how we should handle the display of "No License
> (Proprietary)" within the current interface. I think the aforementioned
> text, a warning icon, and a tooltip with further explanation on the
> problems with this would suffice while also fitting our general aesthetic,
> yes?

Where would that tooltip appear?

As long as it's prominent and tells the user they're making a
potentially dangerous or unintended decision, then it'll probably be
fine.

> Having recently reviewed all of GitLab's gems to ensure compliance with
> their respective licenses, I am fully in support of warning users not to
> release software, libraries, etc. without a clearly-defined license if they
> intend for them to be used by others.

:)

> I also opened an issue regarding compliance with A-level criteria (
> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15678) a little over a month
> ago.

I have seen it, but I haven't had time to fully read it over to consider
feedback (or I have already done so here).  Thanks for opening it, and I
will keep an eye on it, and hopefully read it over in the near
future.  I do have it bookmarked (and still open, actually). ;)

> Again, thank you for your help, feedback, and support in this process. It
> really is appreciated!

Likewise. :)

-- 
Mike Gerwitz
Free Software Hacker+Activist | GNU Maintainer & Volunteer
https://mikegerwitz.com
FSF Member #5804 | GPG Key ID: 0x8EE30EAB

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature