If the copyright issue continues on Github, maybe I can make some tangential, but related remarks here (but feel free to move to a new topic).
I am a newcomer to Solid and that is a unique postion to share some feedback on my first perceptions of the technology. The additional licensing-related remarks in Github by @csarven and @kjetil point to the importance of open licensing (relating to both code and documentation) for the community and getting community contributions.
Ever since I started following Solid from a distance, and received announcements (e.g. by @RubenVerborgh), I checked the Github repo’s but didn’t see a lot of commits and activity. I assumed work taking place elsewhere, out of my sight, like in IRC, mailinglists and - with @timbl involved - in W3C working groups.
Then Solid was launched and I saw some great stuff appearing (like @RubenVerborgh’s React components that hide Solid complexity for devs). Great work, and compliments to everyone involved!
But - and now comes the gist - the whole initiative does not feel to me like an open-standards initiative that is going to a dominant force in decentralizing the web, though that may be what you want to be (note: no disrespect, absolutely not, this is about perception to newbies).
There is the MIT Solid page, that looks a bit like a startup company website with sponsors, and all content ‘All rights reserved’. It points to commercial entity Inrupt Inc where all content is ‘Solid, All rights reserved’. And - most importantly - the community sections are part of that website. Then the Solid Github repo is unlicensed (this thread deals with that), and the spec is fragmented in several repo’s with different licenses. Main spec CC0 (great!) and e.g. web-access-control-spec MIT (why?).
Guess I am saying is, that it may be worthwhile to do more than determining licenses where they are missing, and also look at some restructuring and marketing aspects related to community building.