Relicense the documentation under the MIT License

[carlosmintfan]

So I did a PR because this repo didn't have a license file and it was merged. I added the MIT license. And now I'm seeing in the docs...what?

Oh no. So I must make attribution...well, okay, like in the MIT license. I cannot use the material for commercial purposes? But please! The framework is also licensed permissively!
And now the worst and saddest part: No derivates! Oh yeah. No derivatives...that is hard. And that also means it's illegal that I modify a forked version of this repo and send a PR here...but I want to sent a PR here soon! I've already noted that I want to improve a certain part of the docs. Why would you forbid me? It'd harm nobody.
I hope my words aren't too combative. I appreciate your efforts in maintaining this cool micro framework. I want to contribute to the docs. And I don't like to be forbidden to use the docs commercially. Therefore, let me make you a simple suggestion. Leave your website licensed under MIT as per my PR. Change the license section in the docs accordingly. And if MIT isn't enough for docs, state that while the technical parts are licensed under MIT, the docs themselves are..please use https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en and no more. The NoDerivatives part is...let me say it, it's nonsense of course as nobody would be able to contribute to your docs, but also please don't restrict commercial use. Your framework is licensed permissively – let the docs be it the same. Bootstrap is handling it similarly, with the difference that it uses the deprecated 3.0 version (you may also use it, just chose 4.0 cause cc says it's better) and that it also uses it for the js code of its docs instead of the MIT license.

[akrabat]

Ah. I clearly made a mistake in merging the MIT license as that is effectively forcing a relicense on all contributors work that was created before that as they provided that work on the basis of the existing licence.

There has been no new work created by anyone other than me, so we need to look at the current licence and then make a plan.

I have Covid at the moment so aren't at my best, but will try and sort this out within a week.

[akrabat]

For reference, the original project author picked this license in 2016: 4a27afd

[akrabat]

My reading of https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ and of various commentary is that the intent of the NoDerivatives clause is that you cannot share derivative works, not that you cannot contribute changes to the work.

[akrabat]

Looking at https://github.com/slimphp/Slim-Website/graphs/contributors?from=2015-02-01&to=2024-06-26&type=a, we have 41 people who made more 10 or more lines of changes. To change the license, we would need agreement from all 41 people, or we would have to remove their contribution from the relicensed website.

[carlosmintfan]

My reading of https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ and of various commentary is that the intent of the NoDerivatives clause is that you cannot share derivative works, not that you cannot contribute changes to the work.

So when you close some PR because you don't like it the license forces me to delete my branch and make everything private? That's not very nice. And, I think the PR can still be viewed at GitHub anyway. It would be great if you could ask @codeguy and the contributors if it would be okay to relicense.

[carlosmintfan]

Laravel docs are also MIT as of their license file.

[carlosmintfan]

I have Covid at the moment

Oh no. Hope you get well soon!

[carlosmintfan]

And please look at the wording in the MIT license. It distinguishes between the software and the Software (with capital s). The Software = the software + associated documentation files. And the thing I can deal in without restriction is the Software (including the documentation). I really hope all contributors will agree and the Slim framework website and documentation will get free software, awesome as the framework itself is.

[carlosmintfan]

So I've switched to Laravel, I also want all that great features and the starter kits...a micro framework isn't appropriate for my most use cases. So I don't care that much about the Slim docs license anymore, although MIT'd be nice of course 😃