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"No right to relicense this project" - on changing the license of Mark Pilgrim's chardet from LGPL to MIT after a vibe-coded rewrite (github.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44059967

for those not familiar with Mark Pilgrim, he is/was a prolific author, blogger, and hacker who abruptly disappeared from the internet in 2011.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/968527

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[–] 2 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I did contribute once. And it was a pain. 20 lines of code but hours of work, Mailinglists, feedback, ...

Don't het me wrong , it was fun. But would I have done the same for BSD, so that apple could use this? Hell no

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)

    Perhaps this is our fundamental difference. I write code, solve my small task and have fun by doing it. If someone can get something of it, it's twice as nice.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    And that's fine. And everybody should license his code as he likes.

    But my point stands. String copyleft is important.

    That does not mean that LGPL is always a good idea, and charted is a good example, as the python stdlib is MIT licensed, and therefore an LGPL charted has no chance of getting accepted.

    Btw, the easiest first step would have been: mail every contributor (there are not that many in that case) that provided more then hast some minor fixes and ask for permission. That is a valid way to change the license.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I agree at the point, that everyone should use that license he like.

    Btw, the easiest first step would have been: mail every contributor (there are not that many in that case) that provided more then hast some minor fixes and ask for permission. That is a valid way to change the license.

    No, I think, that would not work this way, you have to ask every contributor, no matter how big the influence was. And everyone must agree unanimously. It's almost an impossible task.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    I agree regarding consesus. Unlikely, but: heaving major contributions greenlighted and only replace parts of the code are fat note feasible.

    No communication happened to my understanding at any point with any contributor.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    You don't need it to be unanimous, but if it's not unanimous, you have to rewrite the parts from people who refused or can't be contacted. If their sum contributions aren't too big, it can be feasible but a lot of work. If too many or if key contributors refuse, the work can scale exponentially.

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