Correct license?

[notlee]

Hey thanks for skratchdot/color-blind, looks like a super useful package!
I'd love to use it in the project I'm working on but have a question about the
license.

The comment for the Color Blindness Simulation function mentions
non-commercial use without HCIRN permission. As the MIT license allows
commercial uses I think it's incompatible?

Although I found on Matthew Wickline's site this update:

20151129 UPDATE
HCIRN appears to no longer exist. This makes it impractical
for users to obtain permission from HCIRN in order to use
color_blind_sims() for commercial works. Instead:

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: http://colorlab.wickline.org/colorblind/colorlab/engine.js

CC4-BY-SA does allow commercial use, but requires anything which
builds on the project to be distributed with the same license, so I think
this project should also be CC4-BY-SA or a compatible license?
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[heberleh]

@notlee that is a great question. It feels like every colorblind-package is non-commercial because of some coefficients or calculations. How can that be? Were they patented or something?
I'm trying to contact people for this project https://galactic.ink/labs/index.php?dir=Color-Vision%2FJavascript%2F
but it is not even clear what is their license and perhaps, how does it connect to potentially 'missed' license, like from HCIRN.

https://github.com/jkulesza/peacock has the same problem.

[Ennoriel]

Hello @heberleh !

Did you get an answer from HCIRN or one of the original author?

Thanks for the reply ;)

[heberleh]

No, nothing new about this. I think there is no problem... But let us know if you find out.

[skratchdot]

sorry for not seeing this until now.

i think this project was setup with the incorrect license from the start. i had a script that was adding mit to my source files.

it's very stupid to have both:

color-blind/lib/blind.js

Lines 16 to 22 in 20dd5e8

	The Color Blindness Simulation function is
	copyright (c) 2000-2001 by Matthew Wickline and the
	Human-Computer Interaction Resource Network ( http://hcirn.com/ ).
	It is used with the permission of Matthew Wickline and HCIRN,
	and is freely available for non-commercial use. For commercial use, please
	contact the Human-Computer Interaction Resource Network ( http://hcirn.com/ ).

and:

color-blind/lib/blind.js

Line 12 in 20dd5e8

* Licensed under the MIT license.

in the same file. it looks like i didn't know how to properly dual license or bubble up the license of the original source file i was using.

based on https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/7436 it seems like i need to convert this entire project to CC-BY-SA and i don't know how that affects people who have already been assuming it's MIT.

any suggestions on how to fix this?

[skratchdot]

I updated the license array in package.json and published v0.1.3:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/color-blind/v/0.1.3

Here's what I changed today:
0.1.1...0.1.3

[Ennoriel]

I think that noone should assume that because a library X is writen with the licence Y means that it does not inherit from one of its dependency a licence more restrictive. We always do... I only saw it because I checked the source code.

The licence Y should not have been set at first but everyone makes mistakes 😄

Thanks for updating the licence 😀

[Giwayume]

It feels like every colorblind-package is non-commercial because of some coefficients or calculations. How can that be? Were they patented or something?

If the formula was patented, that patent is now expired, as patents last a max of 20 years and the copyright states the code was created in 2000.

Copyright is a different thing. You can technically use their methodology since no patent could possibly be valid for it, but any code they wrote is copyrighted so you cannot copy/paste this "color_blind_sims" function verbatim without obeying their license. You could write your own version of the function that does the same thing, as stated, the technique cannot be patented.