ASL 2.0 | MIT | BSD

[sirinath]

Is it possible to move to a more permissive license?

[muneeb-ali]

Our plan is to have most of the other repos e.g., all the clients and crypto libraries etc under a more permissive MIT license. The clients (written in different languages like Python, Go, Java etc) will talk to the Blockstack server over standard HTTP and RPC interfaces and the server will remain under a GPLv3 license.

Does that model work for you or are you interested in the licensing structure of the server specifically?

[sirinath]

We avoid any GPL code other than some of more well know projects as this is a overhead in justifying and explaining why a particular component is OK. So would be interested if the server is also either MIT. BSD, or ASL 2.0 which are more than universally whitelisted.

[muneeb-ali]

Thanks for the info. Just to make sure that we're on the same page, you're talking about the specific case of talking to a GPL component over well-defined API correct? If yes, are you looking to modify what's on the other side of the API?

In our case, you're are not importing or linking GPL code into anything else (you import the client which is MIT) and you're not mixing it with any other code either.

If you can give an example scenario where you're making HTTP/RPC calls to the server and the GPLv3 is an issue that'd be great and I can bring it up with our team. Thanks!

[sirinath]

We are not looking at modifying but nevertheless when prospecting for PoC or Demo for clients if we use GPL code we have the overhead of dealing with legal and copyright related queries. For small operation this can be a lot of headache and overhead as well as being relatively costly exercise. Also some organisation do not use GPL at all so we will be taking on the risk being less successful at making a sale. Our motivation is simply easy to sell!

[muneeb-ali]

Got it. So mostly a business decision for your company given your sales strategy. I'd be really interested to know if/how this impacts the execution of an actual deployment/PoC. Feel free to ping me on our Slack (http://chat.blockstack.org) anytime. Thanks,

[muneeb-ali]

As far as the upcoming plan for license is concerned, it's going to be mostly MIT with the Blockstack server under GPLv3 and we don't expect that to change anytime soon. Closing this issue for now (feel free to reopen it).