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doc: clarify licensing story

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Andrew Gallant 2018-02-22 19:01:43 -05:00
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FAQ.md
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@ -20,6 +20,7 @@
* [How do I create an alias for ripgrep on Windows?](#rg-alias-windows)
* [How do I create a PowerShell profile?](#powershell-profile)
* [How do I pipe non-ASCII content to ripgrep on Windows?](#pipe-non-ascii-windows)
* [How is ripgrep licensed?](#license)
* [Can ripgrep replace grep?](#posix4ever)
* [What does the "rip" in ripgrep mean?](#intentcountsforsomething)
@ -470,6 +471,34 @@ will also reset when PowerShell is restarted, so you can add that line
to your profile as well if you want to make the setting permanent.
<h3 name="license">
How is ripgrep licensed?
</h3>
ripgrep is dual licensed under the
[Unlicense](https://unlicense.org/)
and MIT licenses. Specifically, you may use ripgrep under the terms of either
license.
The reason why ripgrep is dual licensed this way is two-fold:
1. I, as ripgrep's author, would like to participate in a small bit of
ideological activism by promoting the Unlicense's goal: to disclaim
copyright monopoly interest.
2. I, as ripgrep's author, would like as many people to use rigprep as
possible. Since the Unlicense is not a proven or well known license, ripgrep
is also offered under the MIT license, which is ubiquitous and accepted by
almost everyone.
More specifically, ripgrep and all its dependencies are compatible with this
licensing choice. In particular, ripgrep's dependencies (direct and transitive)
will always be limited to permissive licenses. That is, ripgrep will never
depend on code that is not permissively licensed. This means rejecting any
dependency that uses a copyleft license such as the GPL, LGPL, MPL or any of
the Creative Commons ShareAlike licenses. Whether the license is "weak"
copyleft or not does not matter; ripgrep will **not** depend on it.
<h3 name="posix4ever">
Can ripgrep replace grep?
</h3>