I would like to explore relicensing the wikibugs tool as GPL-3.0-or-later with the agreement of all prior substantive contributors. Technically relicensing could be done unilaterally as the current permissive MIT license does not prevent redistribution under a more restrictive license, including non-libre proprietary licenses of all forms such as the the Server Side Public License (SSPL). Unilateral changes to licenses are however generally seen as rude or aggressive behavior by contributors, including me.
Antipathy towards projects embracing the SSPL as an anti-competitive economic tactic is actually where my salty feelings are coming from as I write this task. I would like to reduce the amount of code that I place into public use via OSI-approved licenses which can be converted into non-libre products in the future. Non-libre relicensing has become a common tactic of VC funded companies who previously used FOSS licenses as a marketing strategy, often in combination with "open core" platforms having proprietary add-on features. A cohort of these companies deriving their primary revenue from SaaS hosting fees feel a need to pivot to "source available" non-libre licenses in order to preserve future revenues in the face of competition. Everyone deserves to make a living, but no one deserves to make that living by deceiving others about the future rights to their own work products.
I have had a bias for GPL-3.0-or-later in projects I start for quite a while. My reasoning is that GPL-3.0 is the only license family that can encapsulate code licensed under all other widely recommended OSI-approved licenses (GPL-2.0-only is incompatible with Apache2's patents and indemnification clauses), and it is copyleft which means it requires preservation of rights in derivative works (like the Creative Commons share-alike variants).
- Review commit history to determine who contributed to the project.
- Review files changed by each contributor to determine if changes were code/documentation/design that should be considered copyrightable. Configuration mappings of change topics to IRC channels will not be considered copyrightable work product under this audit.
- Contact via Phabricator, email, chat, and/or talk pages those contributors with an intellectual property right asking for their approval to relicense as GPL-3.0-or-later.
- Upon receiving approval from all parties, relicense the project.
- ✅ @valhallasw T360718#9654631
- ✅ @Legoktm T360718#9656178
- ✅ @bd808 (implied as task creator)
- ✅ @yuvipanda T360718#9660283