Was looking at who is the author and saw "Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]" in the LICENCE (https://github.com/RikkaApps/Shizuku/blob/master/LICENSE#L19...)
Is this still valid? If not does that mean that this app has no license?
Is this still valid? If not does that mean that this app has no license?
However copyright is automatic virtually everywhere in the world, so no copyright notice is needed for it to be copyrighted.
A license is how the copyright holder grants permission for people to copy their works in ways that would normally be forbidden by copyright. The copyright notice being invalid doesn’t affect this.
As programmers, our instinct is to try to interpret things literally, as if they can be represented by math or code.
Copyright is a thing of the law, and laws are not like that. Laws are interpreted by humans, who generally attempt to interpret the spirit, and generally apply reasonable interpretations.
It's clear the author of the code intends it to be available under the Apache 2, and that's good enough.
2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of,
publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the
Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.
For the project as a whole, it is not free. You are FORBIDDEN to distribute the apk compiled by you (including modified, e.g., rename app name "Shizuku" to something else) to any store (IBNLT Google Play Store, F-Droid, Amazon Appstore etc.).
It is NOT open source, it violates freedom 1:
Freedom 1
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.