[REQ] Add a (GH-compliant) license file #354

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1. kaixiong commented on Jun 22, 2024

   

   kaixiong

   on Jun 22, 2024

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   This repository really contains two projects, libvisual (core) and libvisual-plugins (plugins). Core is licensed under LGPL, while the plugins are under GPL. The license files are named COPYING and distributed in their respective directories. I don't quite see how to work with GitHub's presumption of one license per repository.
2. MarcoRavich commented on Jul 14, 2025

   

   MarcoRavich

   on Jul 14, 2025

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   This repository really contains two projects, libvisual (core) and libvisual-plugins (plugins). Core is licensed under LGPL, while the plugins are under GPL. The license files are named COPYING and distributed in their respective directories. I don't quite see how to work with GitHub's presumption of one license per repository.

   Hi there, sorry for the (extremely) late reply:
   you can have multiple licenses on the same repository by just creating different-names license files (LICENSE.GPL and LICENSE.LGPL or LICENSE-LGPL.md and LICENSE-GPL.md for example) of course.

   Check out those multi-licenses repos to get examples of working ones:

   • https://github.com/dezzyne/propagation#readme
   • https://github.com/ahlstromcj/seq66#readme

   Hope that helps.
3. stuaxo commented on Jul 15, 2025

   

   stuaxo

   on Jul 15, 2025

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   There's some info here
   https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/371435

   So I wonder if SPDX can specify how our LICENSE file in the base is, and we add the SPDX string to the README

   In a presentation of the SPDX creators (slide 12), it is very clear:

   Contents of LICENSE:

   Apache-2.0 OR GPL-2.0-or-later

   You could add two additional LICENSE files then: LICENSE.Apache-2.0 and LICENSE.GPL-2.0-or-later.

   In all cases, the README.md should contain a a SPDX license identifier:

   SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0 OR GPL-2.0-or-later

   You can do it like that:

   License

   This work is dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and GPL 2.0 (or any later version).
   You can choose between one of them if you use this work.

   SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0 OR GPL-2.0-or-later

   Note that Apache-2.0 OR GPL-2.0-or-later and Apache-2.0 AND GPL-2.0-or-later makes a big difference. The former means that the user can choose between both (which is the regular case!) and the second one denotes that the user has to comply to both licenses. See also multi licensing on Wikipedia.

   Note that I am using the new (as of 2017-12-28) SPDX License List 3.0 here. The versions of 2017 had GPL-2.0 as identifier for GPL 2.0, but it was not clear whether that meant "GPL 2.0 only" or "GPL 2.0 or any later version".
4. MarcoRavich commented on Jul 15, 2025

   

   MarcoRavich

   on Jul 15, 2025

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   Obviously you can push ANY type of license files you need (even your own one) but, if you want them to be formally recognized by GH, they must necessarily be those standard ones selectable through their license wizard tool.