We appear to be missing a permissive open license for docs

[camerons]

Hi Ben, I'm hoping this is the right way to contact you? I've been scratching a few itches around open licenses, and feel we should be doing something about improving licenses terms for docs. In particular, the DCO is software specific and doesn't fit well with docs. And there isn't a good option for a very permissive license for docs.

I have found some of your works when googling around and I've been impressed. Thanks for sharing. By the way, you appear to have a typo "CYA" in https://ben.balter.com/2018/01/02/why-you-probably-shouldnt-add-a-cla-to-your-open-source-project/

My first problem description is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18tHQjjmtj3FPvkHW_FzeC5uUmgCaqnvTbHkT7_eKjro/edit#heading=h.6wt3bz4x8j2d

Is this something that interests you?

cameron . shorter AT gm a i l.coM

[benbalter]

Most open documentation efforts I've seen have used some variant of the creative commons family of licenses: https://choosealicense.com/non-software/.

Choose a License

Non-Software Licenses

Non-judgmental guidance on choosing a license for your open source project

[camerons]

Thanks for the response Ben. Yes, CC0 was the license we intended to use. (We are writing templates, and we don't want to force users to reference our templates, because sometimes it makes the resulting content messy.) However, informal advice I received from a Google lawyer recommended against CC0 because it is not applicable in all jurisdictions. Further, in comments in doc referenced above, someone found the following advice: https://github.com/OpenScienceMOOC/Main/issues/27

jcolomb commented on 22 Jan 2019 I was today in a very interesting talk about licenses. In brief, there is 2 main legal system, one for UK/USA, and one for Europe (and their respective former colonies). The European one has no copyrights law, but author's rights. That means that CC0 is irrelevant in Europe: you cannot waive attribution necessity (as well as change the title). It also means that you legally have to give attribution to CC0 licensed material if you use in Europe. To simplify, CC0 becomes CC-BY if the author or the user is in Europe (but that very few people will realise it). That means that the CC0 label is misleading in most cases.

-- Is this a sticky enough problem to pique your interest yet?

[koppor]

What' the take on BSD Zero Clause License?

[camerons]

@koppor Informal legal advice I've personally received at the time we selected BSD0 is that BSD0 does address the use case we are after for templates, of not requiring attribution if used.

I've later received updated advice that although BSD0 does address our use case, it is not a written very well from a legal perspective, and has some legal ambiguity. However, I haven't been provided with an alternative license recommendation.

I questioned whether it is a problem that BSD0 references "software" instead of a more inclusive term such as "works". The legal response is that "software" can be interpreted as "documentation" and as such, this is fine.

--

Something to add to this thread. I've asked the following legal questions about incorporating CC-BY into BSD0.

Q. How can a BSD0 licensed project use CC-BY licensed content? A. It’s fine for a BSD0 licensed project to use CC-BY content, build on it, and alter it. The project must include attribution of the CC-BY content as required by the CC-BY license.

Q. What is the end user’s obligation when using work that has a mix of BSD0 and CC-BY licensed content? A. The end user must preserve the CC-BY attribution on the content.