More about Copyright
Questions
/wiki: What sort of license on entries in the wiki? Can we cut and paste text from our own papers/books? Conversely, can we take entries that we've written and put them in our papers/books? The downloaded data should come with an agreement that requires the user to provide bibliographic reference in any publications that make use of the data. Agreement needs to written.
Result of discussion: Creative Commons with parameters: allow commercial use, inherit the same license.
/code: What sort of license issues arise? If no license is specified in their code can we make them agree to default to GPL?
- Who holds the copyright? The authors? A foundation? A journal?
Answers
Thankfully the CreativeCommons project has already put a vast amount of work into thinking about copyright issues for all sorts of computer data.
They have a nice form we can fill out to select a license: http://creativecommons.org/license/
Database
For the database I propose using one of these Creative Commons licenses.
- Fill out the form above during the discussion. Probably "commercial use" will be the most controversial.
- Read the resulting license and discuss it.
- Question: Should we decide on precisely one license and require everybody to use it? Or, should we allow any Creative Commons license chosen by the author?
Summary: we decided on creative commons, 4 out of 6 options (commercial or not, modifications/share alike).
Wiki Encyclopedia
Likewise, for the wiki I propose using one of these Creative Commons licenses.
- Fill out the form above during the discussion. Probably "commercial use" will be the most controversial.
- Read the resulting license and discuss it.
- Question: Should we decide on precisely one license and require everybody to use it? Or, should we allow any Creative Commons license chosen by the author?
Wikipedia uses GFDL. Is that appropriate for us? Basically: contributor owns the copyright on the text he contributes, it is licensed to wikipedia under the GFDL (any use/modification is okay so long as GFDL is applied to new document?), a link/reference to the page is sufficient recognition.
Questions:
Code
License
I propose that we allow any OSI approved GPL-compatible license, e.g., GPL, modified BSD, etc., etc. See the essay Make Your Open Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else. for a nice explanation of why choosing GPL compatible licenses is a good idea:
A Default License
Somebody asked on the wiki "If no license is specified in their code can we make them agree to default to GPL?". Discuss. (Stein's answer: I think the answer is a resounding NO. You can no more do that than math journals could enforce copyright and distribution rights on authors -- and everybody here knows how scrupulous journals are about getting printed and signed (and often faxed) copyright statements from all authors. With SAGE I require an email from the author and/or a heading on the file stating copyright intentions, at a minimum.)