Note that MetaMask, by operating a public repository on GitHub, has agreed to grant all GitHub users worldwide the right to fork their public repository on GitHub, regardless of the terms otherwise stated in their new license.
> If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking).
Wow, knowing the Ethereum community, this is a very quick way to start developing bad blood between the very open-source liberal community and this pretty important piece of Web3 infrastructure...
There's generally nothing stopping a copyright holder from ceasing their distribution under an old license, and starting distribution with a new one. However, detaro linked https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/9285 which brings up that this new license probably violates the license terms of it's GPLv3 dependencies.
Additionally, if they've accepted any pull requests without requiring a contributor agreement assigning copyright to them, they might be trying to relicense code they don't have exclusive copyright over - which AFAIK would make removing the MIT license a violation of said MIT license in that context. (They don't need a license to grant themselves the right to do what they want with their own code, but doing what they want with other people's code is another story.)
Additionally, it's not automatically retroactive - if you've got a copy of the old software (trivial via git) you can presumably still hard fork under the original MIT license terms - it contains no privisos for force-updating the license for anyone who has a copy.
> To ensure the longevity of the services we have been providing to the world, we feel that it is time that we establish some defensibility for our work from large commercial forks.
If you read that as "for our future work" it's just an ordinary license change. I suggest they add that clarification.
floatingatoll|5 years ago
> If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking).
(Disclaimer, I am not your lawyer.)
joey_loey89|5 years ago
ronsor|5 years ago
carlosdp|5 years ago
bergstromm466|5 years ago
Is it similar to this? https://www.cnet.com/news/pulling-back-from-open-source-hard...
MaulingMonkey|5 years ago
There's generally nothing stopping a copyright holder from ceasing their distribution under an old license, and starting distribution with a new one. However, detaro linked https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/9285 which brings up that this new license probably violates the license terms of it's GPLv3 dependencies.
Additionally, if they've accepted any pull requests without requiring a contributor agreement assigning copyright to them, they might be trying to relicense code they don't have exclusive copyright over - which AFAIK would make removing the MIT license a violation of said MIT license in that context. (They don't need a license to grant themselves the right to do what they want with their own code, but doing what they want with other people's code is another story.)
Additionally, it's not automatically retroactive - if you've got a copy of the old software (trivial via git) you can presumably still hard fork under the original MIT license terms - it contains no privisos for force-updating the license for anyone who has a copy.
hirundo|5 years ago
If you read that as "for our future work" it's just an ordinary license change. I suggest they add that clarification.
detaro|5 years ago
slaymaker1907|5 years ago
floatingatoll|5 years ago
pwinnski|5 years ago
jameshilliard|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
goldenkey|5 years ago