Add list of projects using the ISC license [WIP/RFC]

[waldyrious]

I'm not creating a PR yet because I'm still collecting projects to figure out which 3 examples would be a good representative sample. Here's what I've got so far:

• redisent ("a no-nonsense Redis client for PHP")
• bundy ("an integrated authoritative DNS and DHCP server")
• geojson.io ("a fast, simple editor for map data")
• node-glob ("glob functionality for node.js")
• node-semver ("the semver parser for node")
• phantomjs-node ("PhantomJS integration module for NodeJS")
• documentationjs ("beautiful, flexible, powerful js docs")
• iD ("the easy-to-use OpenStreetMap editor in JavaScript")

Some additional notes/TODO:

• It appears that several of @mapbox's repositories are released under the ISC license, but there are a lot of them so I need to sift through them to find the best representative sample.
  • geojson.io seems to be the most popular under the ISC license, added above. Other candidates are geojson-vt, docbox and earcut.
• I would expect (naturally) @isc-projects's repos to also use this license, but the situation isn't exactly clear (see here vs here). Any clues how to interpret this?
• The Node.js package init tool defaults to ISC, so there are bound to be popular packages using the ISC license. I need to find a way to filter the npm repository by license and find the most popular ones.
  • I found two ways to filter npm packages by license: https://libraries.io/licenses/ISC and http://npmsearch.com/?q=license:isc. I've added the most popular ones above (and removed some of the more obscure ones there, to reduce noise).
• OpenBSD recommends it for all new code, but I'm not sure the project can as a whole be described as falling under it. Thoughts?
  • There seems to be an up-to-date mirror of the project's source code at netzbasis/openbsd-src. It could be interesting to scan these source files or grep them somehow to find the primary licences used. licensee doesn't check the contents of source files; maybe fossology could work?
• NetBSD appears to have some components licensed under ISC, need to confirm.
  • Doesn't seem to be the case

Any additional pointers?

[mlinksva]

3 programs that are well known, at least among *nix developers/admins:

• https://github.com/tmux/tmux/blob/master/COPYING ... but they didn't modify the template and fill in
• https://www.sudo.ws/repos/sudo/file/tip/doc/LICENSE
• https://source.isc.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=bind9.git;a=blob;f=COPYRIGHT;hb=HEAD

Found with a wikidata query.

[waldyrious]

Nice, thanks for the additional data and for the Wikidata query example. I hope the interface for those gets more intuitive sometime soon :) I have some questions regarding those:

• The tmux situation seems to be similar to ISC's kea as pointed above (especially given the disclaimer "THIS IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY, CODE IS UNDER THE LICENCE AT THE TOP OF ITS FILE." in the LICENSE file). Are we able to somehow use that file to define the license for the project, or do we need to exhaustively check every source file and confirm that they're all under ISC? And what if most are, but there are a few exceptions?
• The sudo LICENSE file is also more complex than would be desirable for an example, IMO. Do you think otherwise? Also, it uses the old wording of the ISC License which isn't approved by the FSF ("and distribute" rather than "and/or distribute"). Couldn't that be a potential problem?
• bind9 has the same multi-license issue that could make it a non-ideal example. It's not a deal-breaker, but should we weigh (perceived?) popularity over clarity, given that we have other options available?

I've updated my comment above with more info. Some items are tasks I can perform myself, others are questions I'd need help answering.

By the way, @benbalter, is there any way to use Licensee and the Github API to automatically find the most popular repos in github licensed under the ISC license? That would be the ideal way to kickstart this and the other licenses that currently lack examples.

[waldyrious]

I've created a category on the English Wikipedia based on the Wikidata query, and also added OpenStreetMap's iD to the list above.

[benbalter]

is there any way to use Licensee and the Github API to automatically find the most popular repos in github licensed under the ISC license?

No, that's not currently possible via the API.

[mlinksva]

@waldyrious you're right, the ideal example uses are straightforward and none of the three I pointed out are. (BTW, the license notice in each file/one for a repo is something some people feel strongly about one way or the other; I don't.)

I think the ISC projects and OpenBSD are also not straightforward.

Thanks for adding the ISC category on English Wikipedia. Also for all your work on Wikipedia!

[waldyrious]

Thank you both for the comments. At this point I've reached the limit of what info I can collect or what suggestions I can make. I'll need help addressing the two checkboxes that are still open. Can you guys comment on those?

Afterwards we should agree on a list of tools to present as examples. I'm not strongly opposed to complex licenses; I think we're going to have to find a balance between popularity/recognizability and license file clarity/conciseness. Ideally we'd have both, but the most recognizable projects (I'd say sudo, tmux and OpenBSD) are also the more complexly-licensed... The only one that's both quite popular and clearly licenced as ISC is the iD editor, so that should probably be included in the final list.

[waldyrious]

A possible option is mentioning ISC being the default license for new Node.js projects, rather than picking a single node.js package. But that would deviate from the format we've been using for the examples (name+link only)...

[mlinksva]

I think default for Node.js projects and for OpenBSD both face the same problem -- deviation from concrete LICENSE file example.

Given the existing candidates and tradeoffs you've explained, I'd probably go with documentationjs, node-semver, and OpenStreetMap iD ... all straightforward and somewhat popular, and a somewhat good mix of projects.

[waldyrious]

Agreed, sounds like a good compromise to me, although I'm somewhat bummed about tmux and sudo. Anyway, shall I make a PR?

[mlinksva]

Yes, please do make a PR.

[waldyrious]

I'll use this issue to continue listing projects using this license, until a better database is available. (I could add entries to Wikidata, but I suspect entries without a Wikipedia article are kind of a grey area, depending on the popularity of the project.)

• Vis
  ("a vim like text editor")
• node-heapdump
  ("Make a dump of the V8 heap for later inspection.")
• jxcore-cordova
  (JXcore / Node.JS plugin for Apache Cordova / PhoneGap)
• openshift-cartridge-nodejs
  ("Custom cartridge for OpenShift providing the lastest version of Node.js.")
• node-openzwave
  ("node.js interface to libopenzwave")

[mlinksva]

@waldyrious you're more than welcome to use this issue, though I think Wikidata is the right place longer term. There should be a WikiProject FLOSS (or similar) there, but it seems there isn't yet.

Also useful, https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Page

The Vis LICENSE file is pretty interesting -- very clear and helpful on noting files using and terms of code taken from other projects -- but unfortunately not in a format programs can easily parse. Thanks for noting here!

[waldyrious]

I've worked a bit on (English) Wikipedia's category structure to have a complete list of categories for each of the licenses covered by choosealicense. Eventually I'll propose adding an automatic link to the category corresponding to each license. Right now I'm only missing the MS-RL and Unlicense, as well as the non-code licenses (not sure how to name the categories). Any suggestions welcome!

As for Wikidata, I agree, although I'm torn on the inability of using it as a comprehensive directory (even for personal pet projects). Besides, the query interface is very poor for presentation at the moment. Reasonator is an interesting alternative, but I wish we could link directly to the "related items" section.

Ideally, some sort of semantic filtering of publicly available codebases (like openhub or searchcode) would be available, but I haven't found anything comprehensive that allows easy filtering by license yet. Maybe Libraries.io could be it -- I need to investigate further.