Choose a license

[mlauster]

We currently do not have a license for CityGML ADE Energy.

That means, we are quite restrictive, to cite github:

"You're under no obligation to choose a license. It's your right not to include one with your code or project, but please be aware of the implications. Generally speaking, the absence of a license means that the default copyright laws apply. This means that you retain all rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. This might not be what you intend."

https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing/

To open the discussion, what about MIT license?

http://choosealicense.com/ http://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/

[gioagu]

Hi,

this is a topic that needs to be addressed for sure during the next workshop. Thanks for starting the discussion.

Some general notes:

• as of now, besides the interim GIT license, it is implicity "commonly accepted" by all participants that the IP of the Energy ADE is shared by the active contributors. Of couse, we need to clarify this in a formal way.
• during last workshop in Munich it was mentioned that a possibility for the Energy ADE, once it reaches v. 1.0 for example, would be to be published as OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) document. If this intention is confirmed (e.g. next month in Vienna), then we need to come up with a "temporary" license which covers the development period, which is open enough for our needs, but which does not block us when we reach v 1.0 (and/or beyond).
• Prof. Kolbe from TU Munich suggests the Apache licence PLUS some sort of "license preamble" where we clearly state what we plan to to during the development period and the successive steps once we reach release 1.0. I will get in touch with OGC and check what their position is and whether there are suggestions/potential problems, etc.
• I will upload news as soon as I have some ;-)

[RomainNouvel]

Which licence is currently used for the UtilityNetwork ADE?

[JoachimBenner]

Just the same as for the Energy ADE: Nothing

[mlauster]

This link is also nice

http://choosealicense.com/licenses/

[mlauster]

We should add an amendment to our chosen license to state that this license is subject to change if the ADE becomes part of OGC licensing. If we don't add this amendment, we would need to ask every participant to change the license to the OCG license

[mlauster]

This shows you the usage of licenses on github:

https://github.com/blog/1964-open-source-license-usage-on-github-com

And even the discussion we had about non-software licensing is common:

http://choosealicense.com/non-software/

[pgcipriano]

As discussed during the meeting in Wien, the main product of Energy ADE is a data model, thus similar to the case of ISA Core Vocabularies defined by European Commission and described as "simplified, re-usable and extensible data models that capture the fundamental characteristics of a data entity in a context-neutral fashion": https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/core_vocabularies/home

In that case, the data models are licensed with ISA Open Metadata License 1.1: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/site/core_vocabularies/Core_Vocabularies_user_handbook/ISA%20Hanbook%20for%20using%20Core%20Vocabularies.pdf (p.17).

The text of that license is available at: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/category/licence/isa-open-metadata-licence-v11

[mlauster]

Hm, the European Commission license seems to be strictly adapted to their needs, I'm not quite sure about all the terms mentioned there and how to adapt this to our needs and namespace. According to http://choosealicense.com/non-software/, XSD schemas are more or less code, so I vote for taking a software license.

In this context, we would be back to the following proposed licenses:

• http://choosealicense.com/licenses/apache-2.0/
• http://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/

Any further licenses to be mentioned?

I vote for MIT, I'm a fan of keeping it as simple as possible, and don't see advantages of holding the trademark. Still, that's just my point of view, please add your opinions on that and state what for conditions and terms you need!

[YixingChen]

I agree with Moritz to make the license simple.

MIT is a good choice.