Electronics > Open Source Hardware

Github project license based on multiple licenses

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Martin F:
Hi all,

We've done a small file converter project for our hardware and we'd like to release the source code on github as open source.
Ideally, we'd want our project to use an overall MIT license.

However, we have the following dependencies:
- Boost: https://www.boost.org/
- tinyxml12: https://github.com/leethomason/tinyxml2
- date: https://github.com/HowardHinnant/date

While date also has an MIT license, the two others have less common licenses, namely the Boost License (https://www.boost.org/users/license.html) and the zLib license (https://github.com/leethomason/tinyxml2/blob/master/LICENSE.txt).

We've tried to read up on how to properly write the licensing section of our github repo in such a situation, but we still struggle to get it right.

Our initial thinking has been to add a section similar to below at the end of our README and then use MIT as our overall license. But we'd like to hear your thoughts on whether this is an appropriate approach or not.



--- Code: ---### Dependencies
The project uses the following external libraries, apart from the standard library for C++17:
- [Boost]([url]https://www.boost.org/[/url]) 
- [tinyxml2]([url]https://github.com/leethomason/tinyxml2[/url]) 
- [date]([url]https://github.com/HowardHinnant/date[/url]) 

#### Boost license
Copyright Beman Dawes, Daniel Frey, David Abrahams, 2003-2004.
Copyright Rene Rivera 2004-2005.
Distributed under the [Boost Software License, Version 1.0]([url]https://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt[/url]).


#### tinyxml12 license
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any
damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any
purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and
redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must
not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this
software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation
would be appreciated but is not required.

2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and
must not be misrepresented as being the original software.

3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source
distribution.
--- End code ---

Thanks,
Martin

madires:
Just list the dependencies and choose a license for your project.

spongle:
If you're only distributing source code you've written and not the dependencies themselves, you have no obligation under those licenses. Just mark your repo as MIT.

In theory if you were distributing binaries linked to GPL'd dependencies, you could be obligated to release your code under the GPL as well, but this is far from proven.

Doctorandus_P:
I would just mention those other projects as external dependencies and provide links to them, just as you did.

Writing too much about the licencing stuff of those other project makes your own project harder to maintain.
(What if those other licences change?)

Even your notion that you are thinking about this kind of stuff makes your project above average (in the documentation department at least).

m98:
Just opt out of the license crap, and unlicense (https://unlicense.org/) your code.

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