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NCAS-CMS / cfa-conventions

NetCDF Climate and Forecast Aggregation (CFA) Conventions
https://github.com/NCAS-CMS/cfa-conventions/blob/main/source/cfa.md
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Should we add a license for the CFA Conventions? #35

Open sadielbartholomew opened 2 years ago

sadielbartholomew commented 2 years ago

I notice we don't have a license on the repository and for the Conventions, and was wondering if we've considered the possibility of adding a license designed for a project that isn't strictly software?

I am not aware of the context of any decisions related to licensing that may have been made back in ~2018 when the repository was initiated, but I know recently the topic of adding a license has started to be discussed for the CF Conventions (initiated by @bnlawrence, so maybe you have thoughts for this case Bryan?).

I guess the main case for adding a license would be that, without one as present (directly quoting the GitHub license docs):

... without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. If you're creating an open source project, we strongly encourage you to include an open source license.

I raise this now because I believe if you want to add a license to a repo that doesn't have one, every contributor to the repo thus far must explicitly agree that the license can be added - and better do this sooner rather than later when others may have contributed and added to the list of who needs to be asked for permission (as for adding a license to the CF Conventions at this stage, that sounds like a logistical nightmare...)!

davidhassell commented 8 months ago

Yes - I agree that we should have a license for CFA. At from the 2023 CF workshop, it was decided to move to incorporating the CFA conventions in the CF conventions, which (will soon) have there own license. Assuming this comes to pass, I propose that we don't need to need to worry about it here, and can close this issue. Is that OK with you, @sadielbartholomew?