Probable Nicotine+ License Violation

[azu0609]

There's pynicotine code embedded in /backend/src/pynicotine which is licensed under GPL-3.0 as per nicotine-plus/COPYING, however this project uses the Apache 2.0 license according to the LICENSE instead.

I believe this is a direct violation of the Nicotine+'s license. GPL, by definition, is a copyleft license and therefore you cannot just recycle them in an Apache licensed project.

I've also noticed that the package.json#license field explicitly states this project is licensed under MIT rather than the Apache as described in LICENSE, so it has conflicting license even.

[Morgandri1]

afaik, Apache 2.0 is essentially standard for github projects and is the first one they recommend. Assuming @KRSHH has no issues with changing it, i'd be happy to throw a PR to adjust the licenses and fix the discrepancy.

[KRSHH]

what do I do? Should I just attach their leaflet?
and I've fixed package.json, thanks for pointing it out.

[Morgandri1]

Apache is more restricted than GPL, so switching to GPL or a similar copyleft license would fix the violation. Essentially, by using the Apache license, you're saying that the work in this repo is more privately owned than the work that you use in this repo, which means you're partially taking ownership for their software. By changing the license you can avoid this. If you feel strongly about using Apache, you can license your work separately from any pynicotine implementation.

[KRSHH]

I'd like to use Apache separately.

[Morgandri1]

I'm not sure what the procedure for separating licenses are, so I'd suggest hitting GPT for it, but afaik, you can start a new repo with the correct license for your version of pynicotine, and specify within the license of this repo that it does not cover pynicotine, or more specifically, that it covers everything but pynicotine

[KRSHH]

Can't trust ai on legal stuff... I'll have to wait for someone with better knowledge about dealing with licenses.

[azu0609]

I'd like to correct things here.

GPL is more restrictive than the Apache, not the other way around.

As far as I know, GPL is a copyleft license and you are embedding the pynicotine in your own backend as a core part (which would make it a combined work), so you'll either have to change the project's license to GPL or remove the pynicotine then reimplement everything yourselves if you were to comply with the pynicotine license.

Of course I am not a lawyer so I can't say things for sure, however this is the general understanding of GPL.

[Morgandri1]

My apologies, my knowledge of copyleft licensing is fairly limited.

[KRSHH]

If anyone can suggest a way to use PyNitcotine by seperating it from the repo or something like that while keeping apache.
That'd be great...

[azu0609]

Why do you want to use Apache, if you don't mind asking?

I see no reasons to not simply re-license the project to GPL-3.0 to resolve this issue. Practically speaking, it's the only way for this project to use PyNicotine without violating their license. The idea of 'separating' it solves nothing and still would violate the license regardless unless you stop using PyNicotine entirely.

[KRSHH]

GPL is kinda like a plague in OSS, everyone should have freedom to do whatever they want without strings attached.
but hey, it looks like I don't have a choice here.

[eightheve]

I have opened a pull request (#23) to rectify the license issue and update this project to GPL-3.0