CoA Open Source License decisions

From @benguhin It seems like the core questions are (a) whether the city preserves copyright on the work of its employees by default and, if so, (b) what processes we would need to go through to revoke that copyright, which would open up our work for other cities, organizations, and even businesses to build off of.

I am guessing that this might be super simple. If it’s not, it’s an opportunity to engage the tech community more actively in the spirit of Open Government and facilitate a conversation about government as a platform. I think that Open Austin would be excited to help.

Thoughts from Matt Bailey:

Step 1 is to clarify the legal status of your code by default. This varies by State and could well also vary by municipality. For the Federal government, code is generally in the public domain by law. However, that does not apply to code created by State and local government. States have created their own language, some of which mirrors the Federal language and some of which very much preserves copyright for the government.
- Some quick Duck Duck Go-ing yielded this, which seems to indicate that Texas has indeed preserved copyright to government works: http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/texas/
- You should also check on Austin’s situation.
  - First, I’m not sure if TX law would apply to works of the municipal government; IANAL
  - Second, maybe your Mayor/Council would see passage of a more liberal statute as an awesome quick win! People would love it.
- An important point of clarification about CC0: isn’t an open source license. Instead, it’s a “waiver” which is designed basically to renounce the rights of a rights-holder to a work. Federal gov (including 18F) is using it to renounce any claim over its works that are in the Public Domain in the U.S. but may be ambiguously licensed internationally, where Public Domain isn’t uniformly a thing.
- Assuming that Austin’s government works are unambiguously in the public domain, CC0 is the most appropriate default “license” to apply. It is the cleanest, most recognized and best understood way to encourage the reuse of your code/etc.
I strongly recommend starting from 18F’s language (or the language on Code.gov, CFPB..) and adapting it to your local context.
It’s also important to develop plain language for your CONTRIBUTING and README files in your repos to help Austinians and the world understand what your license means to them personally. Again, I’d recommend looking at 18F et al.’s examples.
Final thought: you should also make a non-binding Code of Conduct for your repositories! It helps the community know what’s expected of them in terms of respectful discourse.
- 18F has one: https://github.com/18F/code-of-conduct
- Code for DC has one: http://codefordc.org/resources/codeofconduct.html
- Code for America also has one: https://github.com/codeforamerica/codeofconduct

Next steps Not sure, but wanted to get this in our backlog to pursue. Probs need to set up time with Chris Weema or Elaine Nicholson from Law.

cityofaustin / odd-ops

CoA Open Source License decisions #19