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LICENSE, which version?

Open gauntface opened this issue 5 years ago • 3 comments

Is this project licensed under BitTorrent version 1.1 or version 1.0?

Line 3: Version 1.1

Line 140: The contents of this file are subject to the BitTorrent Open Source License Version 1.0

gauntface avatar Sep 08 '20 20:09 gauntface

The attached license comes from the BitTorrent source code (BitTorrent-5.2.2.tar.gz).

Looking closer at the source code for BitTorrent 5.2.2 and 5.3.0 it appears bencode.py was licensed with the Python Software Foundation License Version 2.3. Switching to this license would probably be a good idea as the BitTorrent Open Source License is not GPL-compatible (source).

fuzeman avatar Oct 04 '20 21:10 fuzeman

The original bencode.py source code used in this library has been distributed under BitTorrent Open Source License Version 1.1, Python Software Foundation License (PSFL) for Python 2.3, and General Public License Version 3.

The most permissive license (PSFL) was mentioned in the file header - but the full license wasn't included in the source code. Using it in this project would be problematic as the license is originally written for Python with Python Software Foundation as the Licensor.

It might be better long term to rebuild the project from scratch with a more permissive license (e.g. MIT License) without using the original bencode.py source code from BitTorrent. I'll work on this over the next week.

fuzeman avatar Oct 04 '20 23:10 fuzeman

Thanks a lot for digging into this

gauntface avatar Jan 04 '21 23:01 gauntface