[TP/CON]: Licensing Review for TP and CON

[astkhikatredi]

Context/background

I am initiating this ticket to address the open-source licensing concerns, following a discussion with Eric. Here's a proposed action plan to navigate this:

What needs to be done?

1. Review Existing Code:
As we use code from various sources, we should identify the licenses associated with each piece.
This will help us determine the minimum level of strictness that should apply to our code.
@helloanil agreed to help with this. since he has some experience.

2. To check the similar organizations:
Investigate the types of licenses that organizations similar to ours use. Own research or maybe we can contact some partner organizations and ask them.

3. Propose License Recommendations:
Based on the findings from steps 1 and 2, suggest a suitable license for our codebase to Mireia and Birgit taking into account the strategy of ReDI School in terms of sharing our platform with other organizations.

4. Add it to the Github repo as LICENSE.md file
5. Mention it in the README.md file

We will take this once we have some time...

[helloanil]

Hi @astkhikatredi, here is the ChatGPT'ed version of the license check. I also attach the exported file from the licenses-checker npm library. We can go deeper with our analysis, find the libraries we use that would cause us issues, and replace them with alternatives.

• MIT (1857 occurrences): A permissive license that is short and to the point. It lets people do anything they want with your code as long as they provide attribution back to you and don’t hold you liable.
• ISC (119 occurrences): Similar to the MIT License, it's a permissive license that allows for almost unrestricted freedom to use, modify, and distribute the software, provided the original copyright notice and permission notice are included.
• Apache-2.0 (59 occurrences): A permissive license that also provides an express grant of patent rights from contributors to users. It requires preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer.
• BSD-3-Clause (53 occurrences): Also known as the "New BSD License" or "Modified BSD License", it's less permissive than MIT or Apache-2.0, requiring the preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimers. It prohibits the use of the name of the project or its contributors in advertising without specific prior written permission.
  -BSD-2-Clause (31 occurrences): A more simplified version of the BSD-3-Clause license that drops the non-endorsement clause.

licenses-direct.csv

[astkhikatredi]

Hey @helloanil , thanks a lot!!
Copying here what we have talked in Slack:
I think I might need a call where you can explain in simpler terms, if possible...
It would also be helpful to prepare a very simple slide with the following info to propose a license for our platforms to discuss with Mireia and Birgit. What could be the implications for other organizations, how to display it on GitHub, and how to handle requests from other organizations to use our code

[astkhikatredi]

Dear @helloanil here is the slide deck about License review.

Let's finish this once the reminders are done.
Thanks!

[astkhikatredi]

Final file is available here:

Connect _ TP Dependency License Analysis.pdf