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December 2025

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[ruby-core:117618] [Ruby master Feature#20437] Could be the licensing conditions be made less ambiguous?
by vo.x (Vit Ondruch) 01 Dec '25

01 Dec '25

Issue #20437 has been reported by vo.x (Vit Ondruch). ---------------------------------------- Feature #20437: Could be the licensing conditions be made less ambiguous? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20437 * Author: vo.x (Vit Ondruch) * Status: Open ---------------------------------------- # Current state The current [COPYING](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/6cfd929034f1fe3d93160365505a8b88… file says the following: ~~~ Ruby is copyrighted free software by Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz(a)netlab.jp>. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under either the terms of the 2-clause BSDL (see the file BSDL), or the conditions below: 1. You may make and give away verbatim copies of the source form of the ... snip ... ~~~ And this is quite ambiguous. Let me show a few examples: # Ambiguous examples ## lib/net/protocol.rb https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/6cfd929034f1fe3d93160365505a8b88bef56159/… ~~~ # This program is free software. You can re-distribute and/or # modify this program under the same terms as Ruby itself, # Ruby Distribute License or GNU General Public License. ~~~ So what is the license? Is it 2-clause BSDL + Ruby + GPL? Or is is just Ruby + GPL but not 2-clause BSDL? ## Racc https://github.com/ruby/racc/blob/d52fb64d166046bfde81e6e9c424fcd884ebcabf/… ~~~ Racc is distributed under the same terms of ruby. (see the file COPYING). ~~~ where the [COPYING](https://github.com/ruby/racc/blob/d52fb64d166046bfde81e6e9c424fcd8… contains just 2-clause BSDL. Not even mentioning that Ruby used to be GPLv2 licensed: https://github.com/ruby/racc/commit/cc7fe952a6b1fc2ef43477674fa13f2d9d99e818 ## Rubygems https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/LICENSE.txt The license is obviously modeled after Ruby COPYING file, but if it could say "licensed under MIT or Ruby", it would be much better. ## Gettext https://github.com/ruby-gettext/gettext/blob/8d84132efd888e68fffbce41331645… The license note is so old that it is not obvious what that means and what was the intention. Did the Ruby relicensing from "GPLv2 or Ruby" to "GPLv2 or BSD" influenced this project? ## SPDX https://spdx.org/licenses/Ruby.html It quotes just the "conditions below" as a Ruby license, while referring to [Ruby license file](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/about/license.txt) mentioning also 2-clause BSDL # Proposal To me it seems that the whole world recognizes "Ruby" license, except Ruby. Therefore I think it would be nice if Ruby project recognized the "Ruby" license. There are two possibilities I can think of: ## Refer the license by name ~~~diff $ git diff diff --git a/COPYING b/COPYING index 48e5a96de7..a2d179a8a9 100644 --- a/COPYING +++ b/COPYING @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@ Ruby is copyrighted free software by Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz(a)netlab.jp>. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under either the terms of the -2-clause BSDL (see the file BSDL), or the conditions below: +2-clause BSDL (see the file BSDL), or the conditions of the Ruby license below: 1. You may make and give away verbatim copies of the source form of the software without restriction, provided that you duplicate all of the ~~~ ## Extract the "conditions below" into "Ruby" license file The "conditions below" text could be extracted into separate file (e.g. "RUBY_LICENSE") and the "COPYING" file rephrased to say: ~~~ Ruby is copyrighted free software by Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz(a)netlab.jp>. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under either the terms of the 2-clause BSDL (see the file BSDL), or Ruby license (see the file RUBY_LICENSE) ~~~ -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

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