Allow selection of multiple licenses

[porst17]

We are currently revising the licenses for programs, galleries etc. on the platform (see #110). Some of the exhibits have incomplete or wrong data and we are trying to clean up.

It turned out that most of the programs are actually licensed under multiple licenses due to various reasons.

The source code of the project has one license (e.g. MIT, Apache v2, GPL v123 etc.), the attached data and documentation may have another (CC, FDL, etc.).

And actually most download packages on the website are distributions that include the dependencies of the program. And all licenses for all packages in the distribution have to be listed.

In essence, we need something similar to what we already have for the authors:

Source code: License 1
Data: License 2
Dependencies: License 3, License 4
Whatever: License 5
...

I currently can't foresee all the different labels we might need, hence the Whatever label ...

It would be good if the licenses could be selected in a drop down menu to avoid mistakes. This would also ease linking to the license text (see #113).

[elondaits]

• I created and deployed a new Licenses field with the requested behavior.
• I also updated the Content Licenses List (the one I added a few days ago) to fetch data from this new field
• There's also a "Programs parts" taxonomy where the different parts which can be licensed are listed (Source code, Data, Documentation, Dependency, Other). It's possible to add new parts.
• I temporarily copied the current "License" field for every program to the new field as a "Source code" license.
• It's possible add any "part" (e.g. Dependency) many times and list a different license each time. Licenses for the same part will be shown grouped an separated by commas.
• The old License field still is in the database but only admins and editors can see it in the edit form.
• The "Dune ash" program didn't have a license so I went to its website and looked it up... so it already has two licenses listed (source and data).
• Both Dune Ash and another Program that had a missing license are currently registered in Imaginary as GPL v3 but are actually licensed as GPL v2. I think GPL v2 should be added since not everyone can/wants to move to v3, but since there might be a reason why it's not already in the list I didn't do it.
• 3D-Xplormath doesn't have a license. I went to its website and see it has a propietary license, it's not open source. The new Licenses field is mandatory so it's necessary to give it a value before making any other changes (otherwise the edit form won't validate and will fail to save).

Finally:

• Let me know when I can safely remove the old License field from the database. There's no rush but it's better to do it sooner rather than later to keep the codebase clean.
• Let me know if you need new licenses or "Parts" or any other changes.
• The new text for the field (name of the parts, etc.) is only in english for the moment. I'm adding it to the translation spreadsheet.

[HexeBianca]

Great! In the future, I would like to have fewer choices for image galleries. Maybe just the CC-licenses. Would that be possible? Please add the CC-0 license. We currently offer only three CC 4.0 licenses. We should have all of them (I think the snapshots only requested some, that's why that happened). Can we get rid of the CC-3.0 licenses or would that cause trouble which I am not aware of?

[elondaits]

I created #116 for the gallery licenses since it'll require some different changes (probably a separate list of licenses).

As for the changes to the list of licenses: Since the CC 3.0 licenses are still valid I can't remove them / move things licensed under 3.0 to 4.0 so they'd have to remain in the database. Do you want to hide them as options for new content?

[HexeBianca]

Yes, that would be a good idea. what would happen if old content gets edited?

[elondaits]

OK, that's issue #117 now.

[elondaits]

what would happen if old content gets edited?

I'll have to see how to hide it and what options I have available. At the very least I'm imagining a "keep your old license or move to a new one" behavior.

[elondaits]

CC0 and all CC v4.0 licenses are on-line.

[porst17]

This looks very promising. There's one thing missing, though: Some programs are only available in binary form. The authors keep the source code secret. So, we need another label for that. Other doesn't really fit, I think. Binary package sounds weird to me. I can't imagine a good label right now. Any ideas?

[elondaits]

I think "Binaries" is what they're normally called...

... having said that... how would a license apply to binaries? No open source licenses can apply to something that's not open. Only "Public Domain / CC-0" would apply, but even then if only the binaries are "public domain" the software is not really public domain. No?

On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 6:23 AM Christian Stussak notifications@github.com wrote:

This looks very promising. There's one thing missing, though: Some programs are only available in binary form. The authors keep the source code secret. So, we need another label for that. Other doesn't really fit, I think. Binary package sounds weird to me. I can't imagine a good label right now. Any ideas?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/IMAGINARY/imaginary-web/issues/114#issuecomment-160088025 .

[porst17]

Binaries is probably the best wording. My mind was kind of stuck on the term Binary package...

There are many licenses that apply to binaries. Almost all commercial and/or proprietary software has some sort of license for their binaries. It's often called End User License Agreement (EULA). Even Creative Commons could fit in my opinion. Many of our images on the platform are just the images, e.g. for SURFER, but no SURFER source file is given. In fact, this is also not open source.

Actually, I also have no clue about the licenses we could offer for binaries on the platform. But nevertheless, it's a fact that we are hosting quite a few binaries without proper license information. Of course, the authors have to take care of proper licensing themselves and it's not really our task. But we need to offer some kind of option for that.

We could also just use the term freeware, like a lot of download platforms for Windows programs do, but I am not really in favor of this option.

@andreasdanielmatt Can you ask our lawyer about the licensing for binaries?

[elondaits]

I added "Binaries".

When I asked how could a license apply to a binary I was vague, but I meant an "open content license" (or open source, copyleft, etc.). The edit form says this under the license select widget:

IMAGINARY is an open source platform. All contents provided on this platform must underly one of the many open source licenses. We recommend the two creative common licenses CC-by-nc-sa or CC-by-sa.

I though it over and a "no derivatives" CC license would go OK for binaries, because you wouldn't be able to alter them... but on the other hand, not all CC licenses are considered open, apparently. For example the CC NC (non commercial) and ND (non derivative) licenses are listed under "The following licenses do not qualify as free documentation licenses" in this list of licenses in the GNU.org site:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicenses

(they're mentioned as applicable to documentation only because they're clearly not applicable to open source as GNU understands it).

So I think ideally the text in the edit form should be modified so it's clearer what type of licenses should submissions fall under and whether binaries without accompanying sources are OK.

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 5:48 AM Christian Stussak notifications@github.com wrote:

Binaries is probably the best wording. My mind was kind of stuck on the term Binary package...

There are many licenses that apply to binaries. Almost all commercial and/or proprietary software has some sort of license for their binaries. It's often called End User License Agreement (EULA). Even Creative Commons could fit in my opinion. Many of our images on the platform are just the images, e.g. for SURFER, but no SURFER source file is given. In fact, this is also not open source.

Actually, I also have no clue about the licenses we could offer for binaries on the platform. But nevertheless, it's a fact that we are hosting quite a few binaries without proper license information. Of course, the authors have to take care of proper licensing themselves and it's not really our task. But we need to offer some kind of option for that.

We could also just use the term freeware, like a lot of download platforms for Windows programs do, but I am not really in favor of this option.

@andreasdanielmatt https://github.com/andreasdanielmatt Can you ask our lawyer about the licensing for binaries?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/IMAGINARY/imaginary-web/issues/114#issuecomment-160558596 .

[porst17]

Thanks for your detailed explanation. Another overview of free/non-free licenses is https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses for Debian.

The decision about licenses is not ours. This has to be discussed with @andreasdanielmatt and maybe others. It is a general question if we always require our content to be open source and how we actually enforce it in practice. I am in favor of open source, but as I said before: We currently host content that is clearly not open source and we have to deal with: Remove it or license it properly.

@andreasdanielmatt Please define a strategy for dealing with non-free and closed-source content.

[andreasdanielmatt]

ok, let's talk about it (@porst17) and then define a policy and decide. I think we will not have time in the coming days, so I propose to postpone it to January (there is just a hell lot of work to be finished in December).