From 196e9199f2d20d31ed51e15677de0cae53966400 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Florian Kohrt Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2024 18:29:27 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] A few improvements to license infos --- choose_license.qmd | 20 ++++++++++---------- literature.bib | 29 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- 2 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) diff --git a/choose_license.qmd b/choose_license.qmd index 8428f59..c1d5482 100644 --- a/choose_license.qmd +++ b/choose_license.qmd @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ You can adapt the following wording to your use case: ## A Primer on Licenses -Whenever you create a literary or artistic work (such as a text, image, video, or software), the copyright law in most countries limits other people from copying, modifying, and sharing it without your express permission. [If the work was created as part of your job, it might be your employer who holds the copyright to the work, depending on the country and contract.]{.aside} This even applies if you make it available to others (e.g., on your website): First and foremost they are not allowed to copy, modify, or share it. This legal default of "all rights reserved" runs counter to many cultural and scientific processes. Copyright licenses enable authors to free up their works for reuse by others. +Whenever you create a literary or artistic work (such as a text, image, video, or software), the copyright law in most countries limits other people from copying, modifying, and sharing it without your express permission. [If the work was created as part of your job, it might be your employer who holds the copyright to the work, depending on the country and contract.]{.aside} This even applies if you make it available to others (e.g., on your website): First and foremost they are not allowed to copy, modify, or share it. This legal default of "all rights reserved" was created to benefit publishers, not authors, [@Fogel2006] and runs counter to many cultural and scientific processes. Copyright licenses enable authors to free up their works for reuse by others. ::: {.column-margin} For the purpose of this tutorial, by _license_ we mean _copyright license_. @@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ A license is a legal document that regulates what _others_ are allowed to do wit ::: {#cau-exclusive-rights .callout-caution} ### Giving Publishers Exclusive Rights -When you have your article published under an open access license, some publishers still demand an exclusive publishing and distribution license that goes further than the open access license available to readers of the journal [@Rumsey2022]. However, technically this is not required for publishers to provide their services [@Suber2022] and authors should oppose this practice. If your chosen publisher insists on an exclusive license, you may at least retain the copyright for your figures -- follow the guide "Retaining copyright for figures in academic publications to allow easy citation and reuse" by @Elson2016 to learn how to do that. +When you have your article published under an open access license, some publishers still demand an exclusive publishing and distribution license or a copyright assignment. This would give them more rights than the readers of the article have through the chosen open access license [@Rumsey2022], and exceeds exceeds by far what is necessary to make publication possible [@Suber2022]. Consequently, authors should oppose this practice and grant publishers the same rights that every other reader of the article has. If your chosen publisher insists on an exclusive license, you may at least retain the copyright for your figures -- follow the guide "Retaining copyright for figures in academic publications to allow easy citation and reuse" by @Elson2016 to learn how to do that. If you have published a closed-access paper before, you can consult [ShareYourPaper](https://shareyourpaper.org/) and [Dissemin](https://dissem.in/) for legal options to still make it available free of charge to readers. ::: @@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ The licenses we discuss here mostly regard copyright. Therefore, recipients may ## Which License to Choose for a Work? -Many boilerplate licenses are available to apply to your work. Which license is appropriate depends on several factors, including existing licenses in place and the type of work, but also your personal considerations. We strongly recommend to apply a _free/open_ license to your work, which means that the work "can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose" [@Moller2015]. Importantly, this also means that others do not need to ask or notify the author and that they can use it for commercial purposes. By the choice of license, authors can, however, demand that they are credited, that the original license is indicated, that modifications are indicated, that derivative works are only shared under the same license, and that no further restrictions are imposed on the work. Software licenses may additionally require to make the source code available to everybody the software is shared with. Because there are many free/open licenses available, the licenses discussed here only represent a recommended subset. +Many boilerplate licenses are available to apply to your work. Which license is appropriate depends on several factors, including existing licenses in place and the type of work, but also your personal considerations. We strongly recommend to apply a _free/open_ license to your work, which means that the work "can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose" [@Moller2015]. Importantly, this also means that others do not need to ask or notify the author and that they can use it for commercial purposes. By the choice of license, authors can, however, demand that they are credited, that the original license is indicated, that modifications are indicated, that derivative works are only shared under the same license, and that no further restrictions are imposed on the work. Software licenses may additionally require to make the source code available to everybody the software is shared with and often require to display the full text of the license upon usage. Because there are many free/open licenses available, the licenses discussed here only represent a recommended subset. ::: {.column-margin} If you would like to choose a license not listed here, it should be appropriate for the type of work in question and be compatible with the dominant copyleft license in the respective community (see also @nte-silos). For software that's almost universally the [GPLv3](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses) and for writing, image, audio, and video that's mostly the [CC\ BY-SA\ 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses). For data, no dominant copyleft license has emerged yet, so any of [ODbL\ 1.0](https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/), [CDLA\ Sharing\ 1.0](https://cdla.dev/sharing-1-0/), and CC\ BY-SA\ 4.0 are acceptable. @@ -80,17 +80,17 @@ First, if you adapt (i.e., modify, build on) a work by others you need to determ If you create a new work and no strong community norms suggest a particular license, you need to choose the license yourself. Which license to choose depends on the type of work you create. Software licenses, for example, may consider that the source code is the preferred form for making modifications, while licenses for data can differentiate between the database and any works produced from it. We have created a flowchart that covers the most likely types of works you will create as a researcher: software, writing (i.e., text), images, audio, video, and data (see @fig-flowchart-simple). This flowchart always recommends the most permissive license possible to maximize reuse -- below we provide two additional flowcharts that allow for more choices. Click on the name of a license to learn more about it. -::: {#tip-dual-licensing .callout-tip} -#### Dual-licensing +::: {#tip-multi-licensing .callout-tip} +#### Multi-licensing Sometimes, the type of a work is not obvious. For example, a Quarto document... - ...contains both R code and writing, and - ...may be distributed in the source format or as rendered document, possibly including images. -One may wonder which license to apply in this case, because Creative Commons licenses are not recommended for source code^[because (among other reasons) they explicitly disclaim any conveyance of patent rights] and applying software licenses to PDFs or images can lead to confusion or nuisance.^[because they often require to keep the license notice intact] +One may wonder which license to apply in this case, because Creative Commons licenses are not recommended for source code^[because (among other reasons) they explicitly disclaim any conveyance of patent rights] and applying software licenses to PDFs or images can lead to confusion or nuisance.^[because they often require to display the full text of the license] -One solution is to make such a work simultaneously available under two licenses, at the choice of the recipient: Either under a specified software license, or under a Creative Commons license^[that is, a license for writing, image, audio, and video]. This is called dual-licensing and makes it easier to reuse both the rendered document as well as the code. For example, one could write: +One solution is to make such a work simultaneously available under two (or more) licenses, at the choice of the recipient: Either under a specified software license, or under a Creative Commons license^[that is, a license for writing, image, audio, and video]. This is called multi-licensing and makes it easier to reuse both the rendered document as well as the code. For example, one could write: > The Quarto files in this project are made available under CC0\ 1.0 or (at your option) under the terms of the Apache Software License\ 2.0. ::: @@ -174,7 +174,7 @@ From the Creative Commons licenses, only [CC0\ 1.0](https://creativecommons.org/ ::: {#nte-silos .callout-note collapse="true"} ### Other Restrictions -As indicated before, a free/open license must allow creating derivative works and must allow exercising the rights granted by it _for any purpose_, including commercial use. There are a few good resources on the reasoning behind that [e.g., see @Klimpel2013; @ODI2015], but we would like to highlight one reason in particular. +As indicated before, a free/open license must allow creating derivative works and must allow exercising the rights granted by it _for any purpose_, including commercial use. There are a few good resources on the reasoning behind that [e.g., see @Klimpel2013; @ODI2015; @Stallman2022NoLimit; @Moller2023], but we would like to highlight one reason in particular. With the rights provided by free/open licenses comes the possibility to build on and combine multiple works by different authors, which is essential for any cultural and scientific activity. However, this is only possible if the various licenses involved are compatible with each other. For example, one is allowed to remix two figures if the first is licensed under CC\ BY\ 4.0 and the second under CC\ BY-SA\ 4.0 because the licenses were written to be compatible with each other [compare @CC2024FAQ]. Also note that CC\ BY-SA\ 4.0 is [one-way compatible](https://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses) with the GPLv3, which in turn is compatible with the AGPLv3. @@ -187,7 +187,7 @@ However, applying a restriction such as only permitting non-commercial use or no So far, we only discussed how to choose a license for works _of one type_. But what if you want to share a project with all kinds of files? For example, the project from this tutorial (among other things) includes a data file, a manuscript file with intermingled code and writing, and an R file. And what if you also want to share files by others, as is the case with `apaquarto` which you may have installed in this project? -The answer is that you need to indicate the license on a per-file or per-folder basis (rather than choosing one for the whole project). The easiest approach is to make note of every foreign work included in your project and record its license. Then, dual-license all the remaining files, which are yours, under a code and a non-code license in parallel as explained in @tip-license-r. +The answer is that you need to indicate the license on a per-file or per-folder basis (rather than choosing one for the whole project). The easiest approach is to make note of every foreign work included in your project and record its license. Then, multi-license all the remaining files, which are yours, under a code and a non-code license in parallel as explained in @tip-license-r. ## Applying the License @@ -198,7 +198,7 @@ Having selected the licenses of your choice -- again, you might need multiple on You may have noticed that we mostly refer to licenses using a name _and_ a version number. This is because the organizations that created the licenses sometimes publish updated versions to accommodate for developments in copyright law and the communities that use the licenses. For example, the Creative Commons licenses (that start with `CC`) were first published in 2002. Since then, the possibility to relicense under compatible licenses has been added ([v3.0](https://creativecommons.org/2007/02/23/version-30-launched/)), a 30-day window to correct license violations has been established to combat [copyleft trolls](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyleft_trolling), and _sui generis_ database rights are covered explicitly ([v4.0](https://creativecommons.org/version4/)). There are many more [subtle differences between license versions](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/License_Versions), therefore it is important to indicate which license version exactly one is referring to, as the license of a work does not "update" automatically. -For the AGPLv3 it is even recommended to state whether a work is licensed under exactly the indicated version of the license or, alternatively, also under newer versions of the license [@Stallman2022]. +For the AGPLv3 it is even recommended to state whether a work is licensed under exactly the indicated version of the license or, alternatively, also under newer versions of the license [@Stallman2022Version]. ::: For example, the `apaquarto` extension that you included in your project is a work by others.^[Unless you are the author of the `apaquarto` extension.] You need to indicate its license so that others know what they are allowed to do -- and, of course, you need to comply with any terms yourself, such as retaining the copyright notice.^[In this particular case, `apaquarto` is licensed under [CC0\ 1.0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/), which does not require you to retain a copyright notice. In fact, it's an extremely permissive license.] In contrast, if it were not for this tutorial, the manuscript would contain your own work and you would need to indicate under which license you provide it to others. diff --git a/literature.bib b/literature.bib index 9b96a41..98453db 100644 --- a/literature.bib +++ b/literature.bib @@ -282,7 +282,7 @@ @online{Morrison2024 note = {Section: Licensing} } -@online{Stallman2022, +@online{Stallman2022Version, title = {For Clarity's Sake, Please Don't Say “Licensed under {GNU} {GPL} 2”!}, url = {https://www.gnu.org/licenses/identify-licenses-clearly.html}, author = {Stallman, Richard}, @@ -514,4 +514,31 @@ @report{ScienceEurope2021 note = {Publisher: Zenodo}, keywords = {{RDM}, Research Data, Research Data Management}, howpublished = {\url{https://scienceeurope.org/our-resources/practical-guide-to-the-international-alignment-of-research-data-management/}} +} + +@online{Stallman2022NoLimit, + title = {Why programs must not limit the freedom to run them}, + url = {https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html}, + author = {Stallman, Richard}, + urldate = {2024-09-21}, + date = {2022-09-06}, +} + +@online{Moller2023, + title = {The case for Free use: reasons not to use a Creative Commons -{NC} license}, + url = {https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC}, + author = {Möller, Erik}, + urldate = {2024-09-21}, + date = {2023-12-15}, + langid = {english}, +} + +@online{Fogel2006, + title = {The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World}, + url = {https://questioncopyright.org/promise/}, + titleaddon = {Question Copyright}, + author = {Fogel, Karl}, + urldate = {2024-09-21}, + date = {2006-05-27}, + langid = {american}, } \ No newline at end of file