Discussion on Open Source Licensing and DELPH-IN Resources

Moderator: WoodleyPackard

Scribe: Jeff Good

Background

The purpose of this discussion was to discuss what decisions DELPH-IN needs to make with respect to software and documentation licenses.

The current state of affairs

Many of the projects affiliated with DELPH-IN have already adopted licenses of one sort or another. Some have no license. This is summarized here:

Aspects of licensing to consider

It was suggested that in choosing a license, resource creators consider at least these three aspects of licensing:

  • Attribution: Who must be cited when a DELPH-IN resource is used by another project (either a project which is part of DELPH-IN or not)? An open question is whether or not the DELPH-IN name should be encouraged as being used in appropriate attribution of DELPH-IN resources.
  • Sharing: If a resource is to be distributed using an open source license, do the resource creators also want to stipulate that any new resources using that resource also be open source?
  • Usage: Are there different requirements for commercial versus non-commerical use of the resource?

DELPH-IN has not adopted any specific policies for any of these three aspects of licensing. As discussed below, the current consensus is that DELPH-IN should leave most licensing decisions up to those working on the individual DELPH-IN projects.

Which licenses might be suitable for DELPH-IN resources

All of the discussion in this section should be prefaced by the disclaimer that no one participating was a lawyer and, therefore, none of the comments or advice given here should be understood to be completely accurate. Only a lawyer can give completely competent advice in the area of licensing. More information on open source licensing can be found in the Open Source Initiative web site.

A summary of different software licenses, including documentation licenses, can be found on the GNU Project’s software licensing page.

For projects where open source licenses are a possibility, it was discussed that the GNU General Public License (GPL) was probably not ideal for many DELPH-IN projects since it requires any software using a library licensed under the GPL to also be open source. This might be considered too restrictive by corporate sponsors of DELPH-IN research. The LGPL and MIT licenses adopted by some of the DELPH-IN projects are free software licenses which do not have this added requirement. (NTT is an example of a corporation which was satisfied with the LGPL but not the GPL.) It was also suggested that the BSD license might be appropriate for DELPH-IN resources. This license allows the source code of a project based on open source software to be closed if major changes are made to it. In practice there appears to be little relevant difference between the MIT and BSD licenses

Since choosing an appropriate license may be difficult for many DELPH-IN members, it was suggested that members from projects who have chosen a license discuss why they chose a particular license on the wiki. This discussion may be helpful to projects which have not yet chosen a license. The relevant wiki articles can be linked to from the LicensingChoices page.

Delph-In policies regarding licenses

There was general agreement that there should not be one required license for all DELPH-IN resources. Rather, individual projects could choose the license or licenses most appropriate for their needs. Furthermore, since DELPH-IN is not a legal entity in any sense, DELPH-IN itself can not license any resources. DELPH-IN’s lack of legal status probably also means it should not adopt a policy of distinguishing between resources licensed for use by DELPH-IN projects and resources licensed for use by other researchers (though licenses should be open to distinguish between research and commercial uses of Delph-In resources).

However, it was also agreed that DELPH-IN should adopt the following policies regarding licenses:

  • All new DELPH-IN resources should be required to adopt some license
  • DELPH-IN projects should publicize which licenses apply to their resources
  • The number of different licenses adopted by DELPH-IN projects should be minimized to the extent possible

Licensing the wiki

One of the more pressing concerns with regard to licenses and DELPH-IN is associating the DELPH-IN wiki with an appropriate license. One of the Creative Commons licenses might be appropriate.

AnnCopestake was unanimously approved as the DELPH-IN member in charge of doing further research on a license for the wiki. She is encouraged to contact those who have already contributed to the wiki in deciding on a license for it.

Last update: 2011-10-09 by anonymous [edit]