microsoft / microsoft/pxt

Clarify the relationship between extension license and approval to be listed in search results

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question
Dominant language
TypeScript
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Description

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I am interested in making and hosting extensions for MakeCode on GitHub. I was reading https://makecode.com/extensions/approval and one item currently reads:

A license file, LICENSE.txt, is present in the root folder. The license type is MIT License. See the Adding a license to a repository topic for more details.

Describe the solution you'd like
The search feature should not depend on what license an extension author has made the extension available under. The Open Source Initiative is a "California public benefit corporation, with 501(c)3 tax-exempt status" who publishes a list of licenses found to meet the Open Source Definition (https://opensource.org/osd) as maintained by that organization. Microsoft should consider allowing extensions to be searchable which contain any license as meeting the Open Source Definition. Or, at least, expanding the list of licenses permitted to belong to a project to allow that project be searchable within the MakeCode application, to a more diverse range of licenses with different conveyances of rights.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Alternatively, similar to how Microsoft Edge allows for selection of a different search engine, permit the end user to specify an alternate search service to display extension results in the application.

Additional context
N/A

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading the MakeCode extension approval page and the current search behavior described in the issue. Compare the documented MIT-only requirement with the proposed OSI-approved license options and decide what approval and search-result behavior should be documented and supported; done means the relationship is unambiguous and the permitted licensing scope is settled.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
documentation, search
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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