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IBM Pushing Apache2 License onto all qiskit repositories on GitHub

18 points by spicywasabi ↗ HN
Noticed this the other day, several users who appear to work for IBM have been pushing the Apache2 license onto users who have used a specific library. It appears automated and some of these repos haven't been worked on in years. Not sure what the end goal is for IBM to push this, but its very strange to see. It appears to be automated in some way because empty repos are even getting hit: https://github.com/B00TK1D/qiskit-playground/issues/1. You can see the full list here https://tinyurl.com/3ba4b6j4 where many repos are happily applying Apache2. Since Apache2 is pretty permissive doesn't this mean IBM can utilize these libraries as they see fit internally?

4 comments

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gtirloni
Where do you see this is from IBM? The issue you linked is not from them.
piperswe
It's from an IBM employee, see https://developer.ibm.com/callforcode/profiles/va/

> as a software engineer for the Qiskit Community team in IBM Quantum, va is focused on building open source tools and creating educational content to assist developers, researchers, students, and educators learn and grasp the concepts of quantum computing.

sdwolfz
Simply report them as spam bottlers and let Microsoft deal with them, if you can be bothered to, otherwise just ignore.
andybak
In most cases a repo without a licence isn't an intentional thing. And if I was to suggest a licence to someone that didn't care much about licences Apache2 is a fine choice.

I see no need to assume there's something nefarious here. I've occasionally prodded someone manually to add a licence.