Add license title

[waldyrious]

The title is not legally mandated, but it's convenient for human consumption, and is typically included in the template text of this license, as recommended by OSI, SPDX, choosealicense.com, and others.

Note: This PR is part of my personal project to improve the consistency and visibility of the ISC license in open source projects. See github/choosealicense.com#377 for more details."

[Alhadis]

GitHub already recognises the license as ISC:

... and the package.json file explicitly lists the license as ISC:

language-regexp/package.json

Lines 5 to 8 in 10c5248

	"keywords": ["RegEx", "RegExp", "Regular Expression", "Patterns", "POSIX", "PCRE", "Perl", "Oniguruma", "TextMate"],
	"repository": "https://github.com/Alhadis/language-regexp",
	"license": "ISC"
	}

So this commit adds nothing of value.

[waldyrious]

As I mentioned in the opening comment, the title is not legally mandated for the conditions to apply (therefore automatic machine detection does not rely on it).

That said, assuming that one would want the license document to actually be read by humans —which is one of the main advantages of using such a succinct license—, then adding the title makes sense. That's certainly why most license texts include the title, and ISC is no exception as the links above indicate.

[Alhadis]

That said, assuming that one would want the license document to actually be read by humans

I'm puzzled by this logic. By the same argument, a human-reader will surely notice "ISC" in the repository's header (or the package's metadata). Moreover, anybody with an interest in law who actually reads these things head-to-toe is going to do so anyway, irrespective of the advertised title. A lawyer who sees "ISC license" isn't going to think "Ah, I'll take their word for it." and pass up reading what could have a modified clause buried somewhere in the text.

Also, I'm not sure why you're compiling a list by hand. GitHub's advanced search already provides a field to search repositories by license:

[waldyrious]

Note that this project was started in 2016, over a year before GitHub implemented the ability to search repositories by license, and before the license started being exposed in the repository overview banner.

Even if it is now redundant within the GitHub platform, in many cases (e.g. for projects that don't use a package.json or other similar metadata file) the license won't be easily identified if one is accessing the source code directly, or via platforms other than GitHub.

As a user, I find it preferable to assume the license file will contain the necessary information rather than having to look at the end of the README, or the package metadata file, or relying on the hosting platform's features to make the license more visible.

This PR in fact simply applies the same principles that motivated GitHub's exposure of the license information more accessible forms (including the simplified license conditions overview atop the license file), but in a more platform-independent manner.

[Alhadis]

So you'd be willing to submit 87 more pull-requests to my other ISC-licensed repositories? Or should I cope with the discomfort of being inconsistent about a license format I've used without change for over 5 years?

[waldyrious]

So you'd be willing to submit 87 more pull-requests to my other ISC-licensed repositories?

Sure — I've offered to do precisely that sort of thing more than once in the past :) It might take me a while to go through all 87 repos, but I'll get through it if the plan is agreeable to you.

By the way, did you perhaps mistype 87? I can only find 57 results from the search.

[Alhadis]

Jesus fucking Christ.

Look, that question was rhetorical. But if you're actually serious about going through with this, you might want to verify that these edits don't cause any issues with github/linguist's license-checks. The licensee gem is quite strict when it comes to identifying licenses from their content, so even a benign change like this can potentially introduce a regression.

Keep in mind I'm only green-lighting these changes because I'm unable to soundly justify not accepting them. If you can prove they won't cause complications with Linguist, and you open a PR for each ISC-licensed repository (including file-icons), then I'll merge them en masse.

I'm still puzzled as to why this is so important to you.

[waldyrious]

I just wrote a small script and ran it. It was an interesting little challenge and I like to learn how to do new things. I don't see why you're so reluctant to accept that people may want to help out in small ways (have you never considered submitting a typo fix to a random repo?), nor why you'd be actively looking for reasons to reject them.

I am no longer interested in pursuing this, as it's clearly not welcome. I can assure you from experience it causes no issues with license detection, so feel free to merge this PR, or close it. I won't bother you anymore.

[Alhadis]

I don't mind janitorial pull-requests, but a license file is only included out of legal necessity. It's by no means intended for human consumption (lawyers and jurisdictions notwithstanding), and certainly not something I'd bother adding to each and every project if it had no bearing on people's ability to use my work.

Nobody would benefit from these changes. Face it, if somebody cares enough to read the license, then they're either going to recognise the ISC license, or know where to check to identify its commonly-known name.