Symphony.

Hi, I'm wondering what the long term plan is for Symphony in terms of licencing? At this stage the licence is protected under Copyright with exceptions to use/distribute etc.

Are there any plans to change the licence to one of the free software offerings such as GNU/MIT/Creative Commons etc? Or are there plans for a commercial model?

I think Symphony is awesome by the way.

From Explore – Features – “Sound Principles” – Symphony.:

Open source

Symphony is open source software, adopting the ultra-permissive MIT/X11 license. Anything you make with Symphony, or for Symphony, is entirely yours to sell, hoard, or donate. It’s your work, and we respect that.

Sounds to me that it's already MIT/X11. I'd hate to see a GNU license ruin this wonderful app, but I don't think there's any danger of that.

I think perhaps the LICENCE provided may need to be updated to reflect that (and spelling fixed)

Not too sure, I'm not 100% on the software licensing :)

Licence is the correct spelling for the noun ("the licence") whereas licensing is correct for the verb ("what is Symphony licensed under?"). It's the same rule as practice/practise I think.

EDIT: seems that the American-English is to always use license for both the noun and verb. Meh.

I've never paid much attention to specific licences. Do we even need one? Isn't "open source" good enough?

Having several jurists in my family (and living in Germany) I think that the licence is rather important. Not only for us, but for the team as well:

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY (...)

:-)

Back to the original post:

At this stage the licence is protected under Copyright with exceptions to use/distribute etc.

Where have you found this? Could it be that you looked at an ancient Symphony 1 installation? (Symphony 2 has been MIT/X11 licensed from the beginning.)

I've never paid much attention to specific licences. Do we even need one? Isn't "open source" good enough?

I think you need one, yes.

I've now had three attempts at writing a basic reply, but I'm not familiar enough with the issues and details involved to be sure I'm right. Choosing a licence depends on your philosophy and intended allowed uses of the source code/project.

I'm interested in the topic as it affects choices of other software being made for a web app I'm involved in. If I find any good articles or info I'll post it here.

I'm not sure if I misunderstood something, but why should we change anything about the Symphony licence? The current licence text is exactly the MIT licence. It gives the user total freedom and makes sure the developers can not be made liable for any damages.

Or are we talking about adding a note like in the extensions' licences?

All source code included in the Symphony archive is, unless otherwise specified, released under the MIT licence as follows ...

Just checked the 'LICENCE' file in the repository and visually compared with what Wikikpedia says, and yeah, it's MIT already as you say, Nils. Doesn't look like it needs updating.

So, veryphatic: it's MIT licensed. :)

Yep.

@veryphatic might have seen a very old Symphony 1 license somewhere, because he claims that there are severe restrictions.

A little bit off-topic perhaps, but should I as an extension-developer also include a license with each extension or are these under the MIT license as well?

Yes. Most of the extensions available do that by the way.

Yes i should include it or:
Yes it's already covered?

Include it!

Would it be enough to make it a link in the Readme's header info?

- Author: Allen's Botnet
- License: <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php>

Savvy readers will note that I essentially just gave Nick Dunn the middle finger

Savvy readers will note that I essentially just gave Nick Dunn the middle finger

/me grabs popcorn in the hope of a spelling flamewar

Hah!

(bloody Yanks.)

I'm glad to live in an educated society capable of the subtleties of language.

(Back at ya.)

Sorry, I don't understand...

I might've learned words like educated and subtleties, but we had to spend all our money on war and Viagra and had none left for teachers.

this is my favourite discussion of all time.

tee hee