Apache 2.0 License

Prismic Administrative Support Billing & Legal
1

I'm considering creating an NPM package specifically for Astro and likely basing it off of a lot of the code in the @prismicio/react package.

I just wanted to say that the use of the Apache 2.0 license in Prismic's open-source packages is discouraging. I'm an idiot with a laptop, not a lawyer. If I make this package public, I'm really not going to be certain I'm adhering to the license.

I know that Prismic probably doesn't go around suing people for making minor violations to an open-source license, but if that IS the case, why not use something like the MIT license? Is there any particular reason?

2

Hey @travis.travis, thanks for your message! We're excited to hear you're considering forking/building from @prismicio/react Astro-specific components/integrations.

Regarding licensing, we hear you when you say the Apache 2.0 License looks more daunting at a first glance than the MIT License. Like you, I'm not a lawyer and I feel similar about it.

The Apache 2.0 License is quite comparable to the MIT License and we believe it's as adopted as the MIT License in open-source (according to the number we've found, 32% of GitHub repositories with 10 or more issues use the MIT License vs. 12% of them use the Apache 2.0 License, making it the 2nd most used license of the platform)

The main reason our legal team opted for the Apache 2.0 License is that while being similar to the MIT License, it also protects us, as a company, against Patent Trolling (which I believe is not something you intend to do). If you want to learn a bit more about the Apache 2.0 License, Snyk has a great article on it: Apache License 2.0 Explained | Snyk

With that in mind, you're welcome to reuse any code from @prismicio/react (or any other SDK of ours). When doing so, you can license your code freely under an MIT License or any other license or yours. All you need to state is that part of your code is adapted from @prismicio/react to Astro (for example)

Let us know if that helps, happy to discuss it further :smiling_face: