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UDST / synthpop

Synthetic populations from census data
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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Choose a license for popgen #1

Closed jiffyclub closed 8 years ago

jiffyclub commented 10 years ago

We should choose a license for popgen. Here are some common ones: http://opensource.org/licenses

UrbanSim is currently covered by the GNU Affero GPL: http://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0

waddell commented 10 years ago

If we want to maximize the incentives to participate and flexibility, and be willing to incur some risk that a private company could take the code and create a commercial version, I would recommend a BSD license.

If we want to minimize the risk of a private company being able to benefit from this, at the cost of reduced flexibility and more impediments to participation, I would recommend GPL or AGPL.

I'm leaning towards the permissive flexibility of BSD. Maximize incentives to participate, and don't worry if anyone else benefits. Hopefully they will contribute.

karthikcharan83 commented 10 years ago

We (Ram and I) are comfortable with a BSD license. However, there is one thing we would like to include in the license and given our limited experience with open-source licensing we will lean on you for advice - we would like to identify individuals and organizations who have contributed to the development and enhancements of PopGen through the years by name in the license. Any recommendations on how best to do this?

waddell commented 10 years ago

I think that could be done, but need to find out exactly how.

Paul

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 5:06 AM, Karthik C Konduri notifications@github.com wrote:

We (Ram and I) are comfortable with a BSD license. However, there is one thing we would like to include in the license and given our limited experience with open-source licensing we will lean on you for advice - we would like to identify individuals and organizations who have contributed to the development and enhancements of PopGen through the years by name in the license. Any recommendations on how best to do this?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/synthicity/popgen/issues/1#issuecomment-47897997.

daradib commented 10 years ago

One option is the Apache 2.0 license. It is permissive like BSD-style licenses (does not require that source be included) and is compatible with GPLv3. Unlike BSD, it grants rights to any authors' patents that apply to the software. It has a clause that requires a NOTICE file containing attribution notices if one is included. Naturally, since Apache 2.0 is compatible with GPLv3, it too can have an attribution requirement.

An attribution requirement could be added to the BSD license, but is not common (and might not be GPL compatible?).

jiffyclub commented 10 years ago

I asked about this on Twitter and was variously pointed at the BSD with attribution and advised against using a non-standard license. The Apache license with a NOTICE file seems like a pretty good option.

waddell commented 10 years ago

Was BSD with attribution considered non-standard, or is that considered a good approach generally?

Paul

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 11:12 AM, Matt Davis notifications@github.com wrote:

I asked about this on Twitter and was variously pointed at the BSD with attribution and advised against using a non-standard license. The Apache license with a NOTICE file seems like a pretty good option.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/synthicity/popgen/issues/1#issuecomment-47965149.

jiffyclub commented 10 years ago

I think the BSD with attribution is hardly used and is probably considered a non-standard modification of the 3-clause BSD license, though the modification seems innocuous enough to me.

In general licenses are not the way people do acknowledgments in software projects. That'd go in the README or some other separate file. The downside of that, which @karthikcharan83 is probably concerned about, is that people are generally not required to reproduce those separate README or other files when redistributing the code. The Apache license with a NOTICE file is an exception to that.