Re: [Social-mediagoblin] Templates, CSS, Images, JS, licensing

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Matt Lee <address@hidden> writes:

> On 04/13/2011 06:48 PM, Christopher Allan Webber wrote:
>>  - *Javascript:* Presumably it makes sense for this to be AGPL also?
>>     Unless for some reason if it normal GPL makes sense, but it's
>>     probably sane enough to stick with one *GPL, and private
>>     modifications to javascript honestly aren't much of a concern.
>>     (Excepting maybe greasemonkey scripts.)
>
> GPL is fine.

Ok.

>>  - *CSS & images/assets:* My thoughts are that I'd prefer that
>>     MediaGoblin ship with a really basic, very configurable base css and
>>     images/assets.  I've thought that these should be CC BY (3.0
>>     unported).  http://mediagobl.in will probably run a fancier, nicer
>>     looking theme, and that might be CC BY-SA 3.0.
>
> Agreed. I think CC-0 for the shipping template, other templates under
> CC-BY-SA 3.0
>

By "shipping template" I'm assuming we're talking about "CSS & images"
kind of template, not template code, since that's discussed below.

Yes, I also think CC0 is right for this.

>>  - *Templates:* Maybe a bit trickier, because technically these contain
>>     logic and thus would all under the AGPL.  If we want also people to
>>     be able to configure the templates to be something else, we'd
>>     probably have to do two things:
>> 
>>      - explicitly declare in the codebase that there's an HTML exception
>>      - maybe license the templates under something like MIT / Apache?
>> 
>>     There's this example with javascript, but the directionality here is
>>     you put this in your javascript so as to not necessarily have to
>>     have your HTML be GPL compliant:
>> 
>>     http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WMS
>> 
>>     Our situation is a bit different.  We want our *templates* to be
>>     more liberally licensed, and not be bound to the AGPL of the
>>     backend's python codebase.  In the equivalence of the above
>>     description, our python code is the equivalent of that javascript
>>     code.  Do we need to include in the header of *all* python files
>>     that this is the case?  In the README.txt/COPYING.txt (w/ a separate
>>     AGPLv3.txt or etc)?
>
> I think the template code should be under the LGPL v3.

Hm.  Also going to copy in your reply to Rob:

Matt Lee <address@hidden> writes:

> On 04/13/2011 07:29 PM, Rob Myers rob-at-robmyers.org |cnuk.org/cnuk/ff|
> wrote:
>> On 14/04/11 00:21, Matt Lee wrote:
>>>
>>> I think the template code should be under the LGPL v3.
>> 
>> Please could you explain the reasoning behind these specific choices? I
>> don't mean that I agree or disagree with them, just that I'd like to
>> understand them better.
>
> Sure.
>
> For JavaScript -- GPL is a fine license. AGPL isn't needed and we
> shouldn't apply it without thinking about why we need it.
>
> For templates -- LGPL is a permissive license that's also upwardly
> compatible with GPL and thus AGPL... I suppose another permissive
> license would also be okay too.

Okay, so, I'm fine with LGPL.  I was wondering if CC0 might also be
appropriate here, then we'd kind of have the whole templates/images/css
side of thing all permissive and permissive in the same absolutely
permissive way.  But I guess maybe LGPL does make more sense if we're
concerned about protecting the value of our template logic.

I'd be good with LGPL or CC0 here.

-- 
The bottom line.