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cboettig / labnotebook

:notebook: Source code and version history for my online lab notebook
http://www.carlboettiger.info
Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal
99 stars 61 forks source link

CC0 is not a license #110

Closed hlapp closed 10 years ago

hlapp commented 10 years ago

The text in README.md with the following statement is a little misleading, and not conforming to CC's own recommendations:

All original content is licensed by Carl Boettiger under the Creative Commons Zero license, CC0.

CC0 is not a license. See here: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27081 http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC0_to_computer_software.3F_If_so.2C_is_there_a_recommended_implementation.3F

Personally, I also think this makes it inappropriate to include the CC0 text as the file LICENSE, because it isn't a license. For my own practice, I've decided to include it instead under the name COPYING, which remains compliant with GNU Free Software recommendation. See here for an example for how this is applied:

https://github.com/NESCent/Chimp-Recs-FieldObservations

cboettig commented 10 years ago

Thanks for catching this, and for the links. Changes made in the commit above. I can't really describe it as "software", but hopefully my adjusted language better reflects the spirit of CC0.

With version 4 out, hopefully CC will revisit the discussion of OSI compliance for CC0.

hlapp commented 10 years ago

Much better, but you're still calling it a license :-)

cboettig commented 10 years ago

heh, I should have read what I wrote more carefully.

Interestingly, it appears that CC still uses the term license in it's semantic definition though, the rel property also calls it a license:

<p xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:vcard="http://www.w3.org/2001/vcard-rdf/3.0#">
  <a rel="license"
     href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">
    <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/zero/1.0/88x31.png" style="border-style: none;" alt="CC0" />
  </a>
  <br />
  To the extent possible under law,
  <a rel="dct:publisher"
     href="http://carlboettiger.info">
    <span property="dct:title">Carl Boettiger</span></a>
  has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
  <span property="dct:title">lab notebook</span>.
This work is published from:
<span property="vcard:Country" datatype="dct:ISO3166"
      content="US" about="http://carlboettiger.info">
  United States</span>.
</p>
hlapp commented 10 years ago

Yes, because there needs to be consistency in where machines look for terms of reuse.

cboettig commented 10 years ago

yeah, that makes sense.