[SeasonOfDocs] licensing discussion

Cameron Shorter cameron.shorter at gmail.com
Tue Jul 9 04:08:51 PDT 2019


Hi Stephanie,

The licenses mentioned are usually applied to software code.

For documentation and other creative works (such as video), more 
applicable and more widely used are the Creative Commons licenses. I 
suggest going back to your legal department and explain to them that we 
are developing documentation. If they are not familiar with Creative 
Commons licenses, I suggest asking them to become familiar.

I'd be happy to talk with them if that helps.

Cheers, Cameron

On 9/7/19 6:27 pm, Jo Cook wrote:
> Hi Stephanie,
>
> Is this true for documentation as well as any code snippets? Does this 
> effectively rule out our desire to use CC-0 or CC-By?
>
> Jo
>
> On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 11:22 PM Stephanie Blotner 
> <sblotner59 at gmail.com <mailto:sblotner59 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     For Uber to contribute to this effort, here's what I learned:
>
>       * We can easily contribute to these licenses: Apache 2, MIT, or
>         BSD (I'll need to jump through more hoops for other licenses)
>       * We *cannot* contribute to projects with the following licenses:
>           o No License
>           o AGPL
>           o GPLv3
>           o LGPLv3
>       * It’s also preferred if the project has no Contributor License
>         Agreement (CLA)
>
>
>     Best,
>     Stephanie
>
>     On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 9:15 AM Stephanie Blotner
>     <sblotner59 at gmail.com <mailto:sblotner59 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         Thanks Cameron,
>
>         I've reached out, but haven't heard anything back yet.
>
>         - Stephanie
>
>         On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 8:33 AM Jo Cook <jo.k.cook at gmail.com
>         <mailto:jo.k.cook at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>             Hi Cameron,
>
>             I've put this out to as many people as I can think of-
>             both at Astun Technology and elsewhere. I hope I'll get a
>             nice spread of answers within the fortnight- I'll let you
>             know!
>
>             Jo
>
>             On Sun, Jul 7, 2019 at 11:17 PM Cameron Shorter
>             <cameron.shorter at gmail.com
>             <mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>                 For those of you working at a company which may have
>                 an opinion on the license selection we choose for
>                 TheGoodDocsProject, could you please reach out to your
>                 legal department and ask them:
>                 1. Do they have an opinion on which licenses we select?
>                 2. Are they able to provide their opinion within a
>                 week or two?
>
>                 I expect we will select one of the permissive
>                 licenses, probably CC0 for media. I'm less opinionated
>                 about any code we create but suspect we would adopt
>                 the license(s) of software projects we extend.
>
>                 On Mon, 8 Jul 2019 at 05:52, Clarence Cromwell
>                 <clarencewcromwell at gmail.com
>                 <mailto:clarencewcromwell at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>                     I think CCO would work for the templates, which is
>                     where I'm most interested in contributing.
>
>                     I hope the templates can be used by corporate doc
>                     teams as well as open-source teams. I know next to
>                     nothing about licensing, but I think that would at
>                     least require the we allow commercial use without
>                     requiring share-alike licensing (which companies
>                     like mine would probably avoid).
>
>                     Clarence
>
>
>
>                     On Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 2:47 PM Jennifer Rondeau
>                     <jennifer.rondeau at gmail.com
>                     <mailto:jennifer.rondeau at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>                         I'm fine with CC-0.
>
>                         FWIW, the Kubernetes docs license is CC-BY and
>                         the code license is Apache 2.0. We do not have
>                         an explicit code license in the docs
>                         repository, however, which has led to some
>                         occasional confusion when people want to use
>                         the docs with the example code. Example code
>                         isn't quite the same thing as what we intend
>                         to provide as code/tools -- but it's analogous
>                         enough that I offer the story as data to back
>                         the "let's be careful to license everything
>                         appropriately" approach.
>
>                         And +1000 to a "how to attribute" section in
>                         our now nicely named metadocumentation.
>
>                         On Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 4:51 PM Erin McKean
>                         <emckean at google.com
>                         <mailto:emckean at google.com>> wrote:
>
>                             Hi folks!
>
>                             One of our action items from the past
>                             meeting was to discuss how to license any
>                             templates or other content produced by the
>                             project.
>
>                             For background, here's a list of CC
>                             licenses:
>                             https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
>                             And here are software licenses (although I
>                             don't think that software licenses are
>                             generally useful for templates we should
>                             probably have the licensing discussion all
>                             in one go and since we may release
>                             tools/code that would be better served by
>                             software licenses ....)
>                             https://opensource.org/licenses
>
>                             For templates, I think the discussion is
>                             "what do we want to enable?" rather than
>                             "what do we want to prevent?" since bad
>                             actors are not noted for their scrupulous
>                             attention to licensing details. :)
>
>                             CC-0 or CC-BY would be the two most open
>                             licenses. I like CC-BY but CC-0 with a
>                             (polite, not binding) request for
>                             attribution would be fine by me, too.
>                             FWIW, it is extremely difficult (to put it
>                             mildly) to use anything AGPL-licensed at
>                             Google, so I would strongly prefer to use
>                             Apache or MIT for any code/tools.
>
>                             In any case, I think we should have a "how
>                             to attribute" section in our
>                             metadocumentation  and also reach out to
>                             the CC people when we've got something we
>                             want to share so that we can be included
>                             in their list of open culture resources.
>
>                             Other open questions:
>                              * what do other similar projects use for
>                             their licenses?
>                              * any other licenses on the no-go list?
>                             (e.g. NC-type licenses close off a lot of
>                             possible users/contributors)
>                              * would we be incorporating content that
>                             would need SA-type licenses? Would we SA
>                             individual tools/docs?
>
>                             In responding, if you could please state
>                             either a clear preference or a "anything's
>                             fine by me" we can try for a rough
>                             consensus quickly -- since relicensing is
>                             problematic we probably need to have this
>                             decided before anything substantial gets
>                             published.
>
>                             Also I am NOT A LAWYER, just a copyright
>                             geek, so I would like to collect questions
>                             and then take them to A Real Lawyer™️ for
>                             answers.
>
>                             Thanks!
>
>                             Erin
>
>                             -- 
>                             Erin McKean | Developer Relations Program
>                             Manager, Open Source
>                             Strategy |emckean at google.com
>                             <mailto:emckean at google.com> | she/her
>
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>
>
>                 -- 
>                 Cameron Shorter
>                 Technology Demystifier
>                 Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant
>
>                 M +61 (0) 419 142 254
>
>
>
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>
>
>             -- 
>             ------------------------
>             http://about.me/jocook
>             _______________________________________________
>             SeasonOfDocs mailing list
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>
>
>
>         -- 
>         Stephanie Blotner
>
>
>
>     -- 
>     Stephanie Blotner
>
>
>
> -- 
> ------------------------
> http://about.me/jocook

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier
Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254

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