Choosing an Open Source License for the Project/Documentation/Code

[jburns131]

Front Matter

Although we all are familiar with Open Source Licensing, I believe we should think about some of the finer points of licensing, especially since we will be creating/licensing documentation (which I've never licensed before), along with custom code/software examples.

Some Open Source Licenses suite code/software better, while some Open Source Licenses suite documentation better.

Project Entities

I feel we can separate the current structure of the project into four separate entities:

1. The "Collaborative Documentation" Project (working title) as a whole
2. The "CollaborativeDocumentation" Gihub Organization and repo(s)
3. The documentation itself
4. Contributed custom code/software examples

   Keeping Mindful

Questions we should ask ourselves regarding what to license:

1. Should we use three separate licenses?
   • One for the project/repo
   • One for the documentation
   • One for code/software examples
2. Should we:
   • Use a single license for both the project/repo and the documentation
   • While using separate a license for code/software examples
3. Should we:
   • Not license the project/repo itself
   • License the documentation and code/software examples separately
4. Should we go another route?

Questions we should ask ourselves about licensing in general:

1. Do want to completely give everything away with limited/no rights?
2. Do we want to allow or prevent others from using the projects contents commercially?
3. Do we want to allow others to use/reference this material elsewhere?
4. Do we want to allow others to use/reference this material with or without attribution?

   Resources

   • OSI - Open Source Licenses - The leading authority regarding Open Source Licensing
   • Licenses I've seen used with documentation:
   • Creative Commons - Both Commercial and Non-Commercial offerings
   • About The Licenses
   • GNU Free Documentation License - Only a Non-Commercial offering

[jburns131]

My quick thoughts on the matter:

• I'm all for licensing the project/repo/docs under the same license, while using a separate license for the example code/software
• I'd love to allow anyone the ability to use/reference contributed material, as long as it is not used in commercial works. I'm not talking about including/quoting contributed work in a magazine article. I'm talking about copy/paste/publish scenario's
• I sort of lean towards required attribution, but attribution to the project as a whole, not to specific individuals. But I could go either way regarding attribution.

I think this would be my vote(s) regarding the licenses used:

Project/Repo/Docs: I'm fine with these licenses:

• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• GNU Free Documentation License
  • A project using this license: Open Book Project

Example Code/Software:

• I really don't care if anyone uses example code/software commercially, but we should pick an Open Source License so no one can license and prevent others from using contributed code/software examples

[ShadMickelberry]

I agree on the commercial work. I would just want to prevent someone from copying and pasting and then commercializing that work. In an effort not to re-create the wheel we will most likely be referencing a great deal of material that is already out there ie:

• php.net
• blogs
• stackoverflow (and similar forum posts)
• How to material already on the web

[a-online]

CC sounds about right

[ShadMickelberry]

Guess we need the group name before we finalize this in (Issue #3). I'm sure either GNU or Creative Commons would work fine. CC Seems easy to implement. Has a generator that I used to produces the tag below

WhyDoTuts by WhyDoTuts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://github.com/WhyDoTuts/CollaborativeDocumentation.

[ShadMickelberry]

Guess GNU is just as easy. Just thinking of implementing in a published version (wiki) and code samples.

Copyright (C) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".