Open Source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Open Source Software does not have a uniform definition. There are two widely respected definitions of Open Source software: The Open Source Initiative definition and the Free Software Foundation definition. There are other less used definitions, such as the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Maintaining an Open Source JavaScript Project? Help Dependents Retain Notices
This post is not legal advice. By reading this post, you agree and acknowledge that this post does not advise you on how to properly license your work and you would not rely on this post to license your work; that this post does not advise licensees of open source work on how to comply with the licenses; and that this post only provides technical guidance on programming tasks that are common to licensing open source projects. Most popular open source licenses require redistributors to retain the copyright and permission notices, among other things. For example, even the brief MIT License explicitly requires so: …The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software… However, without any automation, this simple task is not so simple for a browser (front-end) JavaScript project: Tens and even hundreds of open source dependencies are often bundled and minified into a single .js file. Then, this .js file is commonly distributed to browsers via the Internet. As maintainers of open source JavaScript projects, what can we do to make retaining copyright and permission notices easier for dependent browser JavaScript projects? ...