License of files in tinted-theming/base16-schemes

[DamienCassou]

What is the license of the files in the tinted-theming/base16-schemes project?

I'm asking because I would like to package the files in nixpkgs.

[belak]

This has always been a bit nebulous - the original base16 was MIT, but many schemes have been added since then. They've been packaged with many template repositories which have been released as MIT, and there haven't been any complaints so far, but I don't know if it's known for sure.

I've been operating under the assumption that if schemes are submitted there's an expectation that they're released as a part of the existing template repos and should be fine to release under MIT (in Chris Kempson's repo, a clarification was added to this effect, but I don't think he actually checked all the existing schemes before adding that). This is part of the reason all the schemes were copied here rather than having everything in separate repos.

In the future, I'd like to make the schemes public domain, but I'm not sure that's going to be possible without removing a bunch of schemes.

[joshgoebel]

What is the advantage of public domain vs same a super permission license like MIT?

[belak]

Public domain would mean template repos could be released under other licenses, not just compatible ones. As an example, I'd love to make the Emacs theme GPL'd similar to most other Emacs packages, but I can't easily because the schemes are sort of licensed under the MIT license and they're included inside the templated files, so I'd need tooling to include the proper MIT copyright file with the relevant schemes.

[belak]

I have been looking into this, and if I understand correctly, color schemes cannot have a copyright associated with them. They can be trademarked, but that has to be done in a specific context (the example often used is the colors used in the John Deere logo, because they have successfully sued other companies who have mislead consumers by using their colors).

I think this means we could update the license for the base16-schemes without any major issues, but if anyone knows something different, it would be great to hear.

[JamyGolden]

@belak since no one has responded with any reason not to do it, should we change the schemes' license?