Change license to MIT

[OmarIthawi]

Hi, thanks for creating this high quality theme!

Is the AGPL license choice an intentional one?

I'm unsure if it's appropriate for the theme. It makes sense for Tutor and other parts of the platform but it's customary that theme is full of copyright materials that would conflict with AGPL (as far as I understand) even if it's made a public repository because the AGPL license is a vairal license.

What do you think?

[regisb]

Hi Omar,
The AGPL was a very intentional choice for Tutor and all plugins. This is a complex topic. So before we ask the question of whether we should switch, I'd like to ask if we can. I'm pretty sure that we are not allowed to go from AGPL to MIT, because of the contamination rule. (the reverse is allowed, though) So I'm happy to discuss this from a purely philosphical perspective, but we simply are not going to be able to do anything about it.

[OmarIthawi]

Hi Omar,

The AGPL was a very intentional choice for Tutor and all plugins.

Makes sense for all tutor plugins and Tutor itself.

This is a complex topic. So before we ask the question of whether we should switch, I'd like to ask if we can. I'm pretty sure that we are not allowed to go from AGPL to MIT, because of the contamination rule.

Yes, definitly. As the owner of code (overhang/edly) can re-license to whatever license you need if you've got a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) from all non-edly contributors.

(the reverse is allowed, though) So I'm happy to discuss this from a purely philosphical perspective,

👍🏼

but we simply are not going to be able to do anything about it.

Understood. So what do you recommend regarding copyrighted materials? Say if Edly creates a theme for a customer, would that mean the logo and all the CSS styles have to be AGPL?

It used to be the customary that Open edX is AGPL except for the custom plugins like (marketing site, Carin, Figures, Theme Designer and Theme).

[regisb]

Yes, definitly. As the owner of code (overhang/edly) can re-license to whatever license you need if you've got a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) from all non-edly contributors.

This is not the case, so we are not able to change the license.

So what do you recommend regarding copyrighted materials?

I'm not sure I understand. What copyrighted materials are you referring to? You mean logos? It's perfectly OK to include a copyrighted logo in an AGPL codebase.

Say if Edly creates a theme for a customer, would that mean the logo and all the CSS styles have to be AGPL?

Yes, if it is based on Indigo.

It used to be the customary that Open edX is AGPL except for the custom plugins like (marketing site, Carin, Figures, Theme Designer and Theme).

I'm confused. You're saying the edx-platform themes are not AGPL? According to the license, all files in edx-platform are AGPL, including in themes/.

Whatever is the status of themes in Open edX, the choice of AGPL for Indigo is one that I made a long time ago, way before Edly became the custodian of Indigo, so we can't really do anything about it... And in a certain way, it's also for the better, right? Because it guarantees that Indigo remains free forever for everyone. We wouldn't have the same guarantee if Indigo was MIT.

[OmarIthawi]

Thanks Regis. I'll check and let you know.

[shadinaif]

Thank you @OmarIthawi and @regisb for discussing this

@regisb , just to double check. By plugins, when you said:

The AGPL was a very intentional choice for Tutor and all plugins

you mean only the official plugins for tutor, right? if someone created a plugin from scratch or cookiecutter, it would be included in the (must be AGPL) --- there is actually a license field question when using cookiecutter to create a plugin. Please correct me if I'm wrong 🌷

[regisb]

you mean only the official plugins for tutor, right?

Yes, this is correct. The Tutor plugin system is licensed as Apache 2.0 https://docs.tutor.edly.io/#license Which means that developers can create plugins with the license of their choice, as long as they don't import directly from Tutor non-API functions.

[OmarIthawi]

Thanks @regisb for your kind replies. I'll mark this as complete :)