Get rid of libcoro

[christian-bromann]

The embedded libcoro lib is licensed under GPL which is very restrictive and isn't compatible with popular OSS licenses like MIT. Is there a chance fibers can get rid of it or is it a dependencies that can not be changed?

[christian-bromann]

After refreshing my knowledge on OSS licenses (and I might be still wrong about this): for WebdriverIO it doesn't matter as the code is distributed as node-fibers which means it is not part of the WebdriverIO projects code. That said, you are licensing node-fibers as MIT and afaik if you include GPL licensed code you have to license your project under GPL too which brings me back to the question I raised original: can we get rid of libcoro?

[laverdet]

GPL doesn't affect "software as a service" which I'd guess is the vast majority of nodejs usage. I'm allowed to distribute my source as MIT and use a GPL library internally because I'm not distributing an application. node-fibers may technically be in violation of libcoro's license because I'm distributing binaries on npm but that's only a convenience for users who can't figure out how to install gcc.

[christian-bromann]

node-fibers may technically be in violation of libcoro's license

Hence my question: is it possible to get rid of it?

[laverdet]

Sure, it's possible but it's not something I want to work on. If you'd like to swap out the backend for something with a less restrictive license and do the legwork to verify there are no regressions I may accept pull request.