License question

[MatthewScholefield]

Hello! This is an awesome project! I'm interested in trying it out but the license language isn't standard even though it is very permissive. I was wondering, would you be open to changing the license (or dual licensing) to something OSI-approved like MIT or BSD 2-Clause?

Warm regards,
Matthew

[kraiskil]

Hi Matthew.

It is not quite clear to me what those licenses would give. When stripped of their redundancies they boil down to the same as the onnx2c license (+ some small extra restrictions).

What is the problem that needs solving?

Personally I am actually more inclined towards GPL-2, but since I have no practical way of protecting the copyrights of my work, the license question a bit academic. I don't know what the other copyright holders think...

[MatthewScholefield]

Hi @kraiskil! I did a little research since I wasn't fully certain myself and basically from what I understand, I think you get two things:

1. The language of most existing licenses is drafted with very specific "lawyer speak" or so-to-say which means that each word is chosen in a way that reduces ambiguity and provides consistency with other legal documents. Without this, it can cause a legal risk to both the original code authors and to people who use the code. Here are two examples I could think of that apply to the current license:
   • Risk to original code authors: The clause to disclaim liability doesn't do so in a precise manner. A company could suffer serious losses due to a vulnerability in the code and seek compensation claiming that in this case it didn't cause any individual direct harm but rather caused indirect harm which the license didn't expressly disclaim liability for.
   • Risk to code users: The license doesn't explicitly say users may modify the provided source code. If someone does so, they could later have grounds to be sued by an original code author who could claim that the original license didn't permit code modification; only free use and unmodified distribution.
2. Due to the potential risks above, many companies (and developers like myself) prefer to only use software that is licensed with a copyleft OSI-approved license. Knowing the license follows specific language streamlines approvals and makes it easy for people to feel safe about using it.