A Primer on Open Licenses
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer
all slides are CC-BY 4.0
Open Life Science, �Anna e só
Anna e só (they/them)
I'm known as one of the Outreachy organizers
(Fancier title: I'm our process and information architect!)
Introducing Wikimedia projects and Creative Common licenses to GLAMs in Rio de Janeiro, October 2018
Open Leaders design and build projects that empower others to collaborate within inclusive communities.
Common Misconceptions
❌ Sharing something on the internet or GitHub does NOT automatically allow others to use it.
❌ Sharing work with a license does NOT give away your copyright—you can still publish, sell, etc.
❌ Using work shared with an open license without attribution CAN BE legal, but is still a violation of academic ethics.
Truly Open Licenses: common elements
“Open source software is software that can be freely used, modified, and shared (in both modified and unmodified form) by anyone. “
use
Anyone can use the work for any purpose
modify
Anyone can modify the work
share
Anyone can redistribute both the original and modified work to anyone else with the same license
Attribution
Most open licenses require others to credit the authors or copyright holders of the work.
Examples: CC-BY (and almost all other licenses I’ll mention today)
Exception: CC0 (public domain, no copyright holder)
Wrinkle #1: Copyleft & Derivative Works
Non-copyleft
(permissive, non-reciprocal)
Open licenses that do not require derivative works to shared with the same license.
Copyleft
(reciprocal, aka ‘viral’)
Open licenses that require all derivative works to be shared with the same license.
Examples:
CC BY
MIT, BSD, APL-2.0
Examples:
CC BY-SA
GPLv3, MPL-2.0
Wrinkle #2: Patents != Copyright
Open source software licenses may or may not contain a clause explicitly granting patent rights.
If you plan to patent your software, defend your patent, etc. talk to a lawyer!
How to Apply a License
Place the full text of the license in a text file (usually named LICENSE) in the root directory.
You can include multiple licenses (e.g., one for software, one of content) as long as you are explicit about which license applies to which parts of your work. You can do this in the License section in your README.
data
≠
code
≠
creative works�(e.g. writing or images)
They require different licenses!
| non-copyleft | copyleft |
No patent clause | BSD, MIT | |
Patent snapback | APL- 2.0 | GPLv3, MPL-2.0 |
| non-copyleft | copyleft |
No attribution | CC0 | |
Attribution | CC BY | CC BY-SA |
GitHub can add a license for you, Part 1
GitHub can add a license for you, Part 2
when adding a new file named LICENSE...
TLDR
Further Reading
Choose a License
Thank you!
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