
Zen project forks Zig, relicenses, and “moves” original license to separate file - stock_toaster
https://mobile.twitter.com/andy_kelley/status/1201598161074167811
======
christefano
Response from connectFree here:

[https://zen-lang.org/zig/](https://zen-lang.org/zig/)

~~~
gus_massa
I think the (hard)fork is legal under the MIT license, but IANAL, so I'm not
sure they dotted all their i and crossed all their t. The possibility to fork
and change the license is a standard point in the old discussion of GPL vs
MIT.

I feel part of that post is unnecessary, like:

> _We cannot see a future for Zig where the founder does not allow corporate
> entities to use and support Zig, so in respecting Mr. Kelley 's ideals, we
> felt forced to fork Zig._

I also don't like that they use their own license " _ConnectFree Reference
Source License (CF-RSL)_ ". (I can't find a copy of it.) If the idea is to
make a corporate friendly fork, why not stick to a standard license? Corporate
lawyers hate weird licenses because they have to read them and be sure there
are not weird hidden clauses there. To make a corporate friendly fork, I
suggest MIT.

~~~
andrewflnr
Agree on the license, that alone is so stupid that it's (weak) evidence
they're being dishonest about their motives.

------
markslicker
I took a look. IANAL, however it is clear that they lift library sources and
substitute their own LICENSE file to claim a copyright with different license
terms. Just because the Zig sources don't carry a copyright notice does not
mean they are not subject to copyright, so the least they could do is provide
the original LICENSE file from Zig and make clear what their own contributions
are and what license applies to them.

On the Zig side it would be better to include copyright notices with the files
and maybe consider relicensing to GPL to avoid these situtations in the first
place. Unfortunately many authors today are choosing non-copy left licences
which might go against their intentions and probably their interests as well
as software creators.

~~~
stock_toaster
Yeah, the MIT license is small/short enough that it is probably best practice
to just slap it onto the top of every file. A single file LICENSE is
instructive, but shouldn't be the only place you put a license, or it is apt
to be fiddled around with and/or make it unclear which parts of the source are
under which license, should the project be incorporated into something
downstream.

~~~
markslicker
A copyright notice could be a single line in a source file, just mentioning
the authors and the license that applies.

It gets a bit complicated when you have many authors all contributing to a
github repo. Some projects require the authors to sign off so that the
copyright is assigned to a single entity, that makes relicensing easy. With an
open source project like Zig it might be complicated to relicense since you
have many contributors.

It seems that Zig should maintain a contributors file since they have chosen
the joint copyright model with the MIT license. They could then refer to that
in a copyright notice, which could be a single line per file.

On the Zen side however there seems to be a gross misunderstanding of
copyright. Just because you make some changes to a source file (or no changes
at all) does not allow you to completely reasign the copyright to yourself.

------
mixedCase
Other than the Zen project saying in their response that they "rewrote" the
std library I don't see anything they did wrong.

It sounds like the Zig author wanted to use something like the GPL and chose
the wrong license.

------
ksec
>Zig is licensed MIT but that doesn't mean you get to re-license it. That's
the main thing you can't do.

Um.... What? I was under the impression MIT allows me to do what ever I want.

~~~
mobinmob
It does, with really minimal conditions (keep the license text and copyrights
intact). I do not understand what the problem is. Zen seems to be a hard fork
that uses the zig code and sub-licenses it. That may be unfortunate, but it
seems perfectly legal.

~~~
ksec
Not only that, Zen were one of the Top Contributors and Top Sponsors before
the fork.

Not only is it legal, normal, and also morally correct.

I just cant see the problem.

~~~
stock_toaster
I think the expectation was the part of the MIT license which says:

> keep the license text and copyrights intact

It sounds like the Zen project removed/moved license text itself. Is it ok to
fork a project and rename a LICENSE file to ACKNOWLEDGMENTS and then add your
own LICENSE file? Or does the MIT imply that you must retain the original
license text in the LICENSE file?

IANAL so I have no clue as to the legality of that aspect in particular, but
it sure /seems/ a bit unsavory, even if it may be legally ok.

~~~
mobinmob
The text of the MIT licence specifies that: "The above copyright notice and
this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions
of the Software." So, yes they can rename and move the license file. The
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md file includes all other licenses for code.

