License?

[JYamihud]

What is the license? I can't find a single mention of a license. Please add a license file in the main directory. For now I gonna treat this software as proprietary. Until you add a license.

[immerrr]

For now I gonna treat this software as proprietary.

I agree, that treating the software for which the license is unknown as proprietary/non-free is the most reasonable and safe approach.

However, one may find the license preambles in the source files to which they apply one by one:

• emacs-jedi/jediepcserver.py

  Lines 6 to 24 in e942a0e

  	Copyright (C) 2012 Takafumi Arakaki
  	Author: Takafumi Arakaki <aka.tkf at gmail.com>
  	This file is NOT part of GNU Emacs.
  	Jedi EPC server is free software: you can redistribute it and/or
  	modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
  	published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
  	License, or (at your option) any later version.
  	Jedi EPC server is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  	but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  	MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
  	GNU General Public License for more details.
  	You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  	along with Jedi EPC server.
  	If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

• https://github.com/immerrr/emacs-jedi/blob/e942a0e410cbb2a214c9cb30aaf0e47eb0895b78/jedi-core.el#L9-L21
• https://github.com/immerrr/emacs-jedi/blob/e942a0e410cbb2a214c9cb30aaf0e47eb0895b78/jedi.el#L9-L20

It may be tempting to just add a license file to the main directory, licensing the entire project is not as simple. Whereas I may alter in any way I see fit my contributions to the codebase and their respective license conditions, I cannot do the same for code that was added by other contributors. If the changes were made to previously non-explicitly-licensed files, I may need their explicit permission to relicense their contributions from previously non-free/proprietary license to the license of my choosing. Tracking all contributors for a project that is 10 years old is tricky.

@syohex @tkf i'll defer to your judgement here, as you have been around for much longer than me.

[JYamihud]

I cannot do the same for code that was added by other contributors

GPL is good since if somebody contributes. Now the software is secured from YOU, the main developer, turning it into proprietary. Anyway, good to know that the file you showed is under GPL.

[asmeurer]

Well the very text you quoted says

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Jedi EPC server.

meaning the GPLv3 license should be actually included in the distribution (i.e., as a LICENSE or COPYING file in the repo).

Also, I seriously doubt any contributor ever expected their contributions to be anything other than GPLv3.