RFC 18 - Simplify License

[jugglinmike]

This RFC is an attempt to restart a stalled discussion from 2018. Since opinions on this topic may differ among the newly-formed WPT Core Team, the team may want to reach consensus before requesting approval from @wseltzer and the Patents and Standards Interest Group.

Also note that there are two subtly different pull requests implementing this change: gh-11191 and gh-13650. The team should decide which of these is desired.

Separately: is it appropriate to reference individuals in non-technical RFCs like this? Using GitHub handles seemed too informal (and proprietary besides), but I'm not sure if it's presumptuous to use real names. And while I think listing each person's respective organization enhances inclusiveness by avoiding industry-specific knowledge, it might suggest endorsement in a way that's not accurate.

Here's the rendered version.

/cc @annevk and @plehegar

[foolip]

To allow ample time for on- and off-thread discussion about this, I request that we increase the discussion period to two weeks for this one.

[jgraham]

Please put the full text of the proposed license in the RFC.

[jugglinmike]

Sure thing. The RFC now includes the text from WPT pull request gh-11191, modified only to update the license year.

[annevk]

3-Clause BSD License*

[annevk]

This wasn't fixed (the casing).

[jugglinmike]

Oh, sorry about that! This patch mentions the license by name twice; I didn't realize that and marked your comment as "resolved" when I corrected the second

[jugglinmike]

This should probably list the source "opensource.org" for completeness. And maybe someone should double check it's still the same.

Confirming that this matches the license published at https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

[annevk]

Thanks for working on this, I'm certainly happy with this.

[foolip]

I'm happy with this after internal consultation.

There is one additional change I think needs to be made together with this or shortly after, and that's to update https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md to simply say that the contribution is licensed under the license. @jugglinmike would you like roll that into this change?

[foolip]

Ping @jugglinmike on CONTRIBUTING.md issue.

[jugglinmike]

@foolip The change to the CONTRIBUTING.md file in WPT sounds good to me. I think I'm misinterpreting your suggestion to roll it into this patch because the file is in another repository. Are you suggesting that the RFC document explains how we will modify CONTRIBUTING.md in WPT?

[foolip]

Yes, accepting this RFC will mean merging one or more PRs in wpt. We have one for the license, but if you could prepare the changes to CONTRIBUTING.md, then I think this RFC is good to go.

[jugglinmike]

Got it, @foolip. I just pushed to @annevk's branch for gh-11191, updating the year and reducing the contents of the CONTRIBUTING.md file to the following statement:

All contributions are licensed under the terms of the LICENSE.md file.

[foolip]

Thanks @jugglinmike and sorry for the delay. web-platform-tests/wpt#11191 now LGTM, so if there's nothing further we can merge that and this PR. (I'll check with @jgraham today.)

[foolip]

Checked with @jgraham, no concerns, let's do it.

But I'd like to merge web-platform-tests/wpt#13650 to make it clear that this was OK with @wseltzer, I'll compare the PRs to see if there are still differences.

[foolip]

There was a change of plans after discussing with @annevk on IRC, and I merged web-platform-tests/wpt#11191 and commented a bit on both PRs about their relationship.

I'll now go ahead and merge this PR as well, finally resolving the license issue after all this time. Thank you everyone who helped make this possible!

[foolip]

I just discovered that we left some copies of the W3C 3-clause BSD License behind and have sent web-platform-tests/wpt#21851 to remove them.