The term "fork" is not defined anywhere in the GitHub Terms of Service about site-policy

[apsillers]

KOLANICH, since the GPL requires derivative works to be distributed under the GPL, how would you reconsile that GPL requirement with a Github-required license grant to allow derivatives?

That is, if a license allows derivatives under any terms whatsoever (e.g., you must pay $1000, or get author approval, or not disrespect a particular nation's laws), should we craft the GitHub license terms to allow this requirement on top? If not (or if so), how?

[KOLANICH]

I vote for the approach "if you put that to an open github repo, you allow everybody to copy, modify, use and redistribute the content for any purpose (no "no-competition" licenses). Only licenses granting all this rights are allowed for open repos. If no or an unallowed (proprietary) license was specified, the default one (i advise to make the default one like cc0 or unlicense) is applied.". The next step is to find all the existing repos without an allowed license (the tricky part: there are repos imported from svn and licenses may be specified not as COPYING/(UN)LICENSE, but in the code itself, or even in metadata by spdx identifier), hide them from public (and disallow write access untill they choose what to do to prevent using them as private repos) and ask their owners what to do with their data: apply a free software license, apply the default license or delete the repo. This will require no further effort (except probably the legal one if some copyright troll wanted to sue github for such ToS): since then all the code pushed to github open repos will be free.

[mirabilos]

KOLANICH dixit:

I vote for the approach "if you put that to an open github repo, you allow everybody to copy, modify, use and redistribute the content for

That would, again, exclude any and all copyleft licences, and indeed most copycentre/copyfree licences (“permissive”) as well, since all of the (with very few exceptions like WTFPL) put conditions on such uses. *sigh* Why do people make this mistake over and over again? Same in #38, although that’d be not a problem if it would only apply to repositories that are not already under a licence on my list of free licence lists (cf. #7). bye, //mirabilos -- (gnutls can also be used, but if you are compiling lynx for your own use, there is no reason to consider using that package) -- Thomas E. Dickey on the Lynx mailing list, about OpenSSL

[KOLANICH]

Could you name the free open-source licenses imposing restrictions on uses other than distribution of modified code? I know no such. Even GPL (one of the most restrictive foss licenses) allows to do with the code everything except distributing the code on differrent terms. You can create competing products, you can install software on tivoized device, you are even not required to accept the license in order to use the program! Of course it's just gpl. But permissive licenses are usually even more permissive and allow you to close the source of modified versions. So I really don't understand how this should exclude them.

[KOLANICH]

KOLANICH, since the GPL requires derivative works to be distributed under the GPL, how would you reconsile that GPL requirement with a Github-required license grant to allow derivatives?

It doesn't require derivative works to be distributed at all. You are allowed do with the code which is not distributed anything.

if a license allows derivatives under any terms whatsoever (e.g., you must pay $1000, or get author approval, or not disrespect a particular nation's laws)

I think that licenses requires the things you have put into the braces are not suitable for github open repos because they look like their purpose is copyright trolling (I guess it can be even possible for them to get a subpoena to require GH to provide the court with the list of IP addresses and metadata of people who have cloned a certain GitHub repo without a license in it to own pc using git clone), not sharing the code. I mean that if the people want to share the code they would choose the license allowing anyone to do everything with the shared code, allowing even "usage that for Evil, not Good". But if people want to troll other people with copyright (copyright is pure evil by itself), I guess they should be discouraged from doing that. I propose to write the ToS in the way, making the people publishing the content licensed by "copyright-trolling licenses" to automatically relicense their content posted on GH to a public domain license.

[apsillers]

It doesn't require derivative works to be distributed at all

Sure, but the entire point of this discussion is how GitHub should (or should not) handle the distribution of derivatives via forks. I'll happily amend that sentence to, "the GPL requires derivative works that are distributed to be distributed under the GPL..." without loss of applicability to this topic.

I'm not sure how to meaningfully enumerate the properties that you call "copyright trolling", but I can appreciate a broad kind of good-faith/bad-faith distinction that the ToS might be able to hew out with some work. I can see this requiring a lot of work to keep out the bad-faith licenses without stepping on the good ones, along with a large dose of philosophical disagreement about which licenses are which kind, but this could be a workable solution if GitHub put in the time to write it and weathered the controversy over whether it was correct. I personally think this would not be a worthwhile use of resources, but I can understand if you disagree.

However, let me put forward one more problem: GPL compatibility. Suppose there are two original repos, one under the GPL and another under a GPL-incompatible FLOSS license. Certainly neither of these licenses run afoul of your "trolling" concerns, but if a downstream recipient tries to publish a fork that is a combination of these works, they are in violation of the GPL. I speculate your solution here might be, "Yes, the ToS should grant the right to distribute modifications, but circumscribe this right to allow normal operation of the GPL (and other copyleft) in blocking this combination, but only because the GPL is a good non-trolling license. If a bad-faith license tried to block this combination, it should not be allowed on Github." Is that roughly correct?

[KOLANICH]

I speculate your solution here might be, "Yes, the ToS should grant the right to distribute modifications, but circumscribe this right to allow normal operation of the GPL (and other copyleft) in blocking this combination, but only because the GPL is a good non-trolling license. If a bad-faith license tried to block this combination, it should not be allowed on Github." Is that roughly correct?

Nope. I haven't considered FOSS licenses clashes at all, I only considered mitigations of the case of copyright trolling like

Is it possible to get rich prosecuting GitHub users from a non-lincesed fork?

or licenses like this one

and proposed the solution to make everyone publishing content in a GH open repo to grant everyone accessing this content unconditional permission to copy, modify, use and probably share-alike (I personally vote for unconditional and prefer public-domain like licenses, but I understand that rejecting gpl-licensed projects will make GH bankrupt) permission (but without any conditions like "you are prohibited to use original product's name" or "you are prohibited to use the original developer's name") to distribute that content. If the license grants its permissions - fine. If it doesn't - the code automatically relicensed to the license granting them. For the clashes and other issues - GitHub (virtual) servers belong to GitHub, that's why GitHub can do anything it wants with own servers, including deleting repos and users from it, so if FSF disliked the repo, he could contact the repo owner and/or github to negotiate the situation.

[bluemazzoo]

Any User-Generated Content you post publicly, including issues, comments, and contributions to other Users' repositories, may be viewed by others. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make their own copies of Content from your repositories in repositories they control).

If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking). You may grant further rights if you adopt a license. If you are uploading Content you did not create or own, you are responsible for ensuring that the Content you upload is licensed under terms that grant these permissions to other GitHub Users.

Hi @evandrocoan, thank you for contributing.

Above I have included the new draft of Section 5. License Grant to Other Users from the Terms of Service (emphasis added). The italicized section includes a definition of "fork," i.e. that others may make their own copies of Content from your repositories in repositories they control. The second paragraph of that section includes the license grant required from users for others to fork their content on GitHub.

Feel free to reopen this issue if that does not answer your question, or open a PR If you prefer. Thanks again!

[mirabilos]

I’m a bit puzzled about this issue since the new (Feb 2017) ToS actually do define what’s granted by a fork, which is a major step forward from the previous ToS, modulo #7 of course.

[evandrocoan]

You are welcome @bluemazzoo, but still do not understand when you say:

If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking).

The words to use, display, and perform, means I can through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality:

1. Create pull requests using the GitHub pull requests feature?`
2. Use the GitHub edit feature and create commits?

[wking]

On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 10:54:45PM +0000, Evandro Coan wrote: The words `to use, display, and perform`, means I can `through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality`: 1. Create pull requests using the GitHub pull requests feature?` <details> <p>  </p> </details> 1. Use the GitHub edit feature and create commits? <details> <p>  </p> </details>

These seems separate from “fork”, since that now explicitly covers only making copies. I agree that whether “use” covers sharing new commits is not clear to me.

[evandrocoan]

@bluemazzoo, I opened a pull request #53 on the branch you have been working (github-tos-update-july-2017) trying to elaborate on the fork definition, accordingly to the article:

1. https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown-policy/#b-what-about-forks-or-whats-a-fork