License for Slime

[Stas Boukarev]

Dear Slime maintainers,
I would like to contribute some code to the project, but my employer
(Google) will only permit you to do so if the project is licensed under an
OSI-approved license (https://opensource.org/licenses). I'm not a lawyer,
but my understanding is that "public domain" code is more complex legally
than code released under one of the OSI licenses.
Would the authors consider adding such a license to the project in a
LICENSE file?

Github says Slime has 63 authors.

[Luís Oliveira]

I would like to contribute some code to the project, but my employer

(Google) will only permit you to do so if the project is licensed under an
OSI-approved license (https://opensource.org/licenses). I'm not a lawyer,
but my understanding is that "public domain" code is more complex legally
than code released under one of the OSI licenses.

"SBCL [is] a mixture of BSD-style (for a few subsystems) and public domain
(for the rest of the system)" and Google contributes to that project.
Perhaps you can point them to that case? Hope that helps. I'm not a lawyer
either; I have no idea what would be required to change SLIME's license.

Cheers,

[Stelian Ionescu]

I would like to contribute some code to the project, but my employer

(Google) will only permit you to do so if the project is licensed under an
OSI-approved license (https://opensource.org/licenses). I'm not a lawyer,
but my understanding is that "public domain" code is more complex legally
than code released under one of the OSI licenses.
"SBCL [is] a mixture of BSD-style (for a few subsystems) and public domain
(for the rest of the system)" and Google contributes to that project.
Perhaps you can point them to that case? Hope that helps. I'm not a lawyer
either; I have no idea what would be required to change SLIME's license.

Maybe you don't necessarily need to change the licence of existing code.
Just like with the legacy code from Spice Lisp and CMUCL which was public
domain, it should be enough to state that the licence for new code is MIT and
over time the code base would become a mixture, just like SBCL. I guess this
should be ok to appease lawyers.

[Luís Oliveira]

Post by Stelian Ionescu
Maybe you don't necessarily need to change the licence of existing code.
Just like with the legacy code from Spice Lisp and CMUCL which was public
domain, it should be enough to state that the licence for new code is MIT and
over time the code base would become a mixture, just like SBCL. I guess this
should be ok to appease lawyers.

I wouldn't have a problem with that. Would it help, Red?

[Red Daly]

Thanks for the replies. The idea of using a license for new code might
indeed help. I now have some questions out to the open source team here,
and I will reply when they get back to me.

For some background reading on public domain software from OSI, I found
this page informative: https://opensource.org/faq#public-domain

Post by Stelian Ionescu
Maybe you don't necessarily need to change the licence of existing code.
Just like with the legacy code from Spice Lisp and CMUCL which was public
domain, it should be enough to state that the licence for new code is MIT and
over time the code base would become a mixture, just like SBCL. I guess this
should be ok to appease lawyers.

I wouldn't have a problem with that. Would it help, Red?

[Red Daly]

Oops, meant to reply all.

I got approval to contribute if the new code is in a separate file
released under MIT (and other OSI-approved licenses). Thanks for the
suggestion and willingness to do this.
Aside from edits to Makefiles, I am not able to modify files that have
been released into the public domain. It also sounds problematic or
impossible to apply a license to code previously released into the public
domain, so my original post to this thread was naive - apologies.

Post by Red Daly
Thanks for the replies. The idea of using a license for new code might
indeed help. I now have some questions out to the open source team here,
and I will reply when they get back to me.
For some background reading on public domain software from OSI, I found
this page informative: https://opensource.org/faq#public-domain

Post by Stelian Ionescu
Maybe you don't necessarily need to change the licence of existing code.
Just like with the legacy code from Spice Lisp and CMUCL which was

public

Post by Stelian Ionescu
domain, it should be enough to state that the licence for new code is

MIT
and

Post by Stelian Ionescu
over time the code base would become a mixture, just like SBCL. I guess

this

Post by Stelian Ionescu
should be ok to appease lawyers.

I wouldn't have a problem with that. Would it help, Red?
--
Luís Oliveira
http://kerno.org/~luis/

[Stelian Ionescu]

So-called "public domain" might be more complex, but that doesn't stop
the QPX team from actively using it.

Dear Slime maintainers,
I would like to contribute some code to the project, but my employer
(Google) will only permit you to do so if the project is licensed
under an OSI-approved license (https://opensource.org/licenses). I'm
not a lawyer, but my understanding is that "public domain" code is
more complex legally than code released under one of the OSI licenses.>
Would the authors consider adding such a license to the project in a
LICENSE file?>
Best,
Red

--
Stelian Ionescu a.k.a. fe[nl]ix
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.