carpenterlab / open-science-rules

Collaboratively written manuscript discussing Ten Simple Rules for Enabling Open Science in Biomedical Research
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Assign software, data, and figures a permissive open source license #7

Open gwaybio opened 4 years ago

gwaybio commented 4 years ago

Open source licenses are required for others (developers and end-users) to rapidly build upon and improve current research.

However, open source licenses come in many different flavors. Dual-licensing is possible too.

Make sure to consider how the license will require your work to be attributed but also how it will restrict others in using your research.

allaway commented 4 years ago

My gut reaction is to always opt for the most permissive license. But what are the cons of a permissive license?

Related to that, why do people pick licenses such as CC-BY-NC? What's the rationale? If a company makes a better (or worse) commercial fork of software, what does the original developer lose? If a company develops a drug based on data and commercializes it? Who loses? Certainly not the patients, because they end up with one more therapeutic option.

This is something that might be worth exploring - why people pick these more restrictive licenses and how we can incentivize permissive licensing?