Update license to GPLv3 to account for SimpleBLE new commercial license

[jubesab]

See https://github.com/OpenBluetoothToolbox/SimpleBLE?tab=readme-ov-file#license for more details.

Since February 15th 2024, SimpleBLE is now available under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3), with the option for a commercial license without the GPLv3 restrictions available for a fee.

The GPLv3 license ensures that end users have the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the software. It requires that any modified versions of SimpleBLE, or any software incorporating it, also be distributed under the GPLv3. Essentially, if your project incorporates SimpleBLE and is distributed, the entire codebase must be open-source under the GPLv3.

[thegecko]

This isn't something I'm keen to jump in to lightly. Changing the license of this project also affects consumers of this project.

Therefore, if the license of SimpleBLE is changing and webbluetooth decides to remain MIT licensed, we will pin the SimpleBLE version to to a prior release still using MIT (currently v0.6.1)

[jubesab]

Indeed, it does seem that 0.6.1 is still under MIT.
But what does this mean for the future of this library though?
You will not be able to get any fix or improvement from SimpleBLE then.

[thegecko]

You will not be able to get any fix or improvement from SimpleBLE then.

This needs to be balanced with the potential that the license change means existing users can no longer use this library without having to OSS their own software.

Keen for input from others here.

[maelp]

Would rather keep MIT indeed...

[thegecko]

OK, the main release for this library will stick with SimpleBLE v0.6.1 (the last MIT licensed release).

Does anyone see benefit in somehow also releasing a GPL version of this library using the latest SimpleBLE?

If so, how would this be achieved? Options I can think of:

• Creating a new library and maintaining both
• Building and shipping both SimpleBLE versions offering a way to choose between them at runtime
• Using some funky versioning scheme to denote which version is which (e.g. v3 remains MIT and v4 becomes GPL)

[jubesab]

Hi @thegecko,

As of today, your library is the only working implementation of web-bluetooth in NodeJS around so I think it would be beneficial to have a GPL alternative that would allow companies to purchase a simple BLE license to be able to use this package and benefit from the latest and greatest.

I'm not sure what would be the easiest way but 2 code base to maintain seems like a lot of extra work. The versioning scheme might be somewhat confusing to developers with some applications ending up using the GPL version inadvertently.

[thegecko]

Revisiting this, it looks like SimpleBLE has gone through a multitude of licences recently, landing on something called BUSL.

We need to move forward in offering a way to support the latest releases, so I'm thinking of going down the route of using the version to signify the license:

• v3* will be MIT
• v4+ will follow the OSS license(s) of SimpleBLE

I know the intention of SimpleBLE is to support both commercial and non-commercial usage, but with this new BUSL license, its not clear to me what OSS license can be used for this library.
I can see it reverts to GPLv3 after some time, but in the interim does the consumer need to also be BUSL, GPLv3 or is it prohibited from using SimpleBLE without a commercial license?

cc @kdewald

[thegecko]

Looking at this a bit more SimpleBLE seems to anything but simple when is comes to the licensing.
It seems I can only use the latest release if this library also uses a BUSL license or similar. I have no interest in that.

A bit of delving shows licensing history for SimpleBLE to be:

v0.6.1 MIT
v0.7.0 BSD3/GPLv3
v0.7.1 BSD3/GPLv3
v0.7.3 GPLv3
v0.8.1 GPLv3
v0.9.0+ BUSL-1.1

So I think the only option is to add a v4 which switches to GPLv3 and tracks v0.8.1 (until 20th January 2029 when v0.9.0 reverts to GPLv3).