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Add CC-BY-4 license #1

Closed kytrinyx closed 7 years ago

kytrinyx commented 7 years ago

UPDATE: we settled on choosing the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

original issue:

Since the documentation is all text-based, I think it would make sense to have a creative commons license.

I don't know which one.

rootulp commented 7 years ago

I think choosealicense might be helpful. From the non-software section:

Open source software licenses can be used for non-software works, and often are the best choice. This is particularly the case when the works in question can be edited and versioned as source, e.g., open source hardware designs. Choose an open source license.

kytrinyx commented 7 years ago

I looked through the licenses on choosalicense.com, but I don't think a software license is necessary for this. Looking at other content sites, for example https://opensource.guide, it's under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-4) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ErikSchierboom commented 7 years ago

Well, I don't know much about content licenses, so I usually look at what other people do. The Microsoft docs use the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).

kytrinyx commented 7 years ago

The question I have with regards to which CC license to use, is whether or not we think that commercial use is OK. I'm perfectly happy with people reproducing this for learning, informational, inspirational purposes, and while I can't imagine that anyone could find a way to make a buck off of documentation like this, I'm still wary of the idea.

jtigger commented 7 years ago

No need to leave open the possibility for commercial use, @kytrinyx. I don't know licenses well at all, so I can't meaningfully contribute here. I'm glad you're thinking about bits like this.

markijbema commented 7 years ago

It seems strange to restrict commercial use of the documentation, but not the product: https://github.com/exercism/exercism.io/blob/master/LICENSE

So you can perfectly legal make a commercial clone of exercism, but you cannot use any documentation? This triggers my consistency radar.

(feel free to disregard my opinion, mostly lurking nowaydays ;) )

kytrinyx commented 7 years ago

Yeah, you're right.

I was thinking of this clause:

The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community.

Which doesn't restrict commercial activity, but does require that any changes you make are made available to the community.

Based on the current discussion I think CC-BY-4 is the right way to go.