2024-10-28 Project Proposal: Relicensing¶
Author: @dhruvkb
Reviewers¶
Project summary¶
This project aims to change the license of the code in the Openverse monorepo to better align with the GPL license used by WordPress itself and other projects associated with WordPress.
Goals¶
This project aligns Openverse with the WordPress project. It also updates Openverse to use a stronger copyleft license from the GNU family of licenses instead of the MIT license which has fewer protections.
Requirements¶
The project requires a comparison of various licenses to identify the best possible license for different blocks in the monorepo. The project also requires an understanding of various licenses and the implications the choice of license would have on the project itself and on integrations using the Openverse data via the API.
Success¶
The project can be considered both shipped and immediately successful after each individual component of the monorepo has completely moved to the new proposed licenses.
Participants and stakeholders¶
Essentially every contributor who has ever submitted a patch to Openverse will be a stakeholder in this project.
The project would also affect existing integrations so we will need to notify the maintainers of these integrations about the change to the license.
Infrastructure¶
Change to the license would not involve any infrastructure changes.
Accessibility¶
Change to the license would not involve any accessibility changes.
Marketing¶
We should broadcast the change in license because of the following reasons.
Openverse would now use a GNU license which aligns with WordPress.
Openverse would be be covered by stronger copyleft protections.
Required implementation plans¶
One implementation plan is required to arrive at the ideal license and document a process for conversion.