Select a license for *THIS DOCUMENT* and one for any code snippets included

[zbeekman]

This is a continuation of #7. For discussion about choosing a license for a project please see #8. Any off topic comments here will be deleted (and possibly moved to the correct thread, if an admin user is feeling benevolent).

The two issues addressed here are:

Licensing THIS document/project

i.e., Fortran-FOSS-Programmers/Best_Practices

The license should probably not be a license intended to be applied to software. Here is a list with people's votes (I or @szaghi will try to keep this up to date.)

Here is a very brief overview and discussion of CC licenses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license

member	unlicense	CC0	CC-by	CC-by-sa
@zbeekman				👍
@szaghi				👍
@cmacmackin				👍

Licensing code snippets within this document

The code snippets should be licensed very permissively unless someone has a good argument to the contrary

member	unlicense	CC0	CC-by	CC-by-sa
@zbeekman	👍	👍
@szaghi		👍
@cmacmackin		👍

[szaghi]

@zbeekman thank you very much for your help, this was a very hard day... I wish tomorrow-office-day come quickly!

[cmacmackin]

@zbeekman do you know if there is any particular reason to use unlicense rather than CC0? I know CC0 is the one recommended by GNU for this stuff, but is there a major difference between it and unlicense? Where Creative Commons has a larger community behind them, might they have had thee resources to better think out their licenses?

[szaghi]

@cmacmackin I have not the reference under my gingers, but I remember that somewhere I read to avoid unlicense... maybe @zbeekman can give us some references to study it.

[nncarlson]

Could someone please explain the argument for licensing code snippets differently than the remainder of the document?

[zbeekman]

I'm probably not the correct person to explain, but my casual impression is that snippets are so minimal and common that it is a pain to have to attribute them, etc. if you copy pasta them into your code. Therefore, you may want attribution etc license for documents, and other written works, but realistically it is unlikely that the snippets will be properly attributed, or distributed along with a license, etc. Giving them a license that says effectively do whatever you like with the snippets (or an exemption of the snippets from the main documentation license etc.) minimizes the chances of someone "misusing" the snippet and violating the licensing terms of the snippet, which unless explicitly declared otherwise, might be CC-by-sa, for example.

As I said, this is largely speculative on my part, I am not an authority and have done little research, but felt inspired to comment anyway...

[cmacmackin]

Furthermore, most Creative Commons licenses (except CC0) are considered
inappropriate for source code. Creative Commons admits this themselves.
I gather it's because those licenses don't say anything about patents.

On 16-01-17 11:33 PM, Izaak Beekman wrote:

I'm probably not the correct person to explain, but my casual
impression is that snippets are so minimal and common that it is a
pain to have to attribute them, etc. if you copy pasta them into your
code. Therefore, you may want attribution etc license for documents,
and other written works, but realistically it is unlikely that the
snippets will be properly attributed, or distributed along with a
license, etc. Giving them a license that says effectively do whatever
you like with the snippets (or an exemption of the snippets from the
main documentation license etc.) minimizes the chances of someone
"misusing" the snippet and violating the licensing terms of the
snippet, which unless explicitly declared otherwise, might be
CC-by-sa, for example.

As I said, this is largely speculative on my part, I am not an
authority and have done little research, but felt inspired to comment
anyway...

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Chris MacMackin
cmacmackin.github.io http://cmacmackin.github.io

[nncarlson]

Thanks for your thoughts @zbeekman. Seems to me to be the only plausible reason. That said, I can't imagine this document containing any code snippets that wouldn't clearly fall under fair use exception and therefore not require any attribution or license whatsoever. These are going to be non-functioning, fragmentary, code skeletons that illustrate various points, and which standing alone wouldn't even meet the threshold for copyright protection. I have no problem with specifying a different license for the snippets (it ought to be CC0 though), it just seems unnecessary to me.

[zbeekman]

You may very well be correct. I'm not an expert by any means.
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 3:17 PM Neil Carlson notifications@github.com
wrote:

Thanks for your thoughts @zbeekman https://github.com/zbeekman. Seems
to me to be the only plausible reason. That said, I can't imagine this
document containing any code snippets that wouldn't clearly fall under fair
use exception and therefore not require any attribution or license
whatsoever. These are going to be non-functioning, fragmentary, code
skeletons that illustrate various points, and which standing alone wouldn't
even meet the threshold for copyright protection. I have no problem with
specifying a different license for the snippets (it ought to be CC0
though), it just seems unnecessary to me.

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[szaghi]

Dear All,

I have added CC-by-sa and CC0 licencese here, basing my choice on the above votes. I will change them if needed in the future (in case other votes will come).

See you soon.

[zbeekman]

Perfecto

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 11:23 AM Stefano Zaghi notifications@github.com
wrote:

Dear All,

I have added CC-by-sa and CC0 licencese here
https://github.com/Fortran-FOSS-Programmers/Best_Practices#-copyrights,
basing my choice on the above votes. I will change them if needed in the
future (in case other votes will come).

See you soon.

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