[Bug Report] License terms for parts of the project unclear

[gspr]

The LICENSE.md file says that parts of this project is copyrighted by Roboti LLC. There is no license specified for the code this applies to. Seeing as that code is distributed together with, and is entangled with, OpenAI Gym, I believe this leaves the overall license state of the project in limbo. It certainly makes it very hard for any serious project to rely on Gym. IANAL, but it seems to me that the project even violates GitHub terms of service in its current state.

Please clarify the license for all of the code, or perhaps expunge the parts that are unclearly licensed.

Checklist

• [✓] I have checked that there is no similar issue in the repo (required): There are in fact similar issues, but they have all been closed with no comments. I'm trying again, as this is a serious bug.

[RedTachyon]

(also IANAL) I'm not sure I understand the confusion, the Roboti LLC thing refers explicitly to Mujoco models, which are used in the mujoco and robotics parts of the repository. If you use them, you need to have a Mujoco license anyways for it to run. If you don't, you don't.

Also worth noting that per as #2366, there are plans to replace those with open-source alternatives, either PyBullet or Brax

[gspr]

Ariel Kwiatkowski ***@***.***> writes:

(also IANAL) I'm not sure I understand the confusion, the Roboti LLC thing refers explicitly to Mujoco models, which are used in the `mujoco` and `robotics` parts of the repository. If you use them, you need to have a Mujoco license anyways for it to run. If you don't, you don't.

OK, that sounds good! But as far as I can tell, this isn't explicitly said anywhere. I'm afraid that this leaves the licensing question up to guesswork, which sounds very risky. A clarification that explicitly lists the files that are not under the project's overall MIT license would probably help rectify the situation (but IANAL).

Also worth noting that per as #2366, there are plans to replace those with open-source alternatives, either PyBullet or Brax

Good news!

[jkterry1]

I'm going to mark this as "PR needed" just in recognition of the fact that when we finally pull mujuco out (which we're working on) we need to remove that license note.

[jkterry1]

with the new version of mujoco stuff merged this should be fixed now

[gspr]

with the new version of mujoco stuff merged this should be fixed now

I disagree. LICENSE.md still says that the project is licensed under the MIT license, but then in the MuJoCo section makes it clear that that's not entirely the case when it goes on to say that "this work" is licensed under something that isn't even a license (merely a Roboti LLC copyright claim).

I know that MuJoCo was finally released under a free license, but LICENSE.md in Gym doesn't say anything about which files that applies to and what the license actually is.

This issue should be reopened, as the problem still stands: Not all the contents of the Gym repository is under clear licensing terms. Use/modification/redistribution of Gym remains, as far as I (IANAL) can tell, frought with potential copyright violations.