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Description
I'm planning to relicense the classifier gem from LGPL-2.1 to MIT and wanted to get consent from contributors, particularly @dfayram who wrote the original LSI implementation.
Why change to MIT?
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Simplicity - MIT is a short, easy-to-understand license. LGPL's terms around linking and distribution can confuse users about what they're allowed to do.
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Ruby ecosystem norms - The vast majority of Ruby gems use MIT. LGPL creates unnecessary friction for developers evaluating dependencies.
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Commercial adoption - Some companies have blanket policies against LGPL due to its copyleft provisions. MIT removes this barrier.
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Current state is confusing - The
lib/classifier.rbheader already contains MIT license text, but the LICENSE file and gemspec say LGPL. Cleaning this up is overdue. -
No practical benefit from LGPL - LGPL's protections made more sense for C libraries. For a Ruby gem that's always distributed as source, the distinction between LGPL and MIT is largely academic.
What I need
If you contributed code to this project and are okay with it being relicensed under MIT, please comment below with your approval. Specifically looking for sign-off from @dfayram for the LSI code.
Thanks!