Why CC-BY-SA as default LICENSE file

inbo / checklist

An R package for checking R packages and R code

https://inbo.github.io/checklist

GNU General Public License v3.0

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Why CC-BY-SA as default LICENSE file #49

Closed peterdesmet closed 3 years ago

peterdesmet commented 3 years ago

In https://github.com/inbo/checklist/commit/4892c8ed747174127b14e1e68c2d588cfbc288b1 I noticed that https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ is used as default LICENSE file. That is a bit of an odd choice for software. What is the reasoning?

ElsLommelen commented 3 years ago

See discussion in #18. ;-)

ElsLommelen commented 3 years ago

Oups, I see this is not really a discussion on which license. In any way, this commit concerns the function setup_source(), which is a function that adds tests to repo's that are not packages, e.g. repo's to produce tutorials or reports.

peterdesmet commented 3 years ago

Yeah, indeed. #18 discusses the usefulness of a LICENSE file and I agree it is. But what license? I think that for non-package repositories that contain longer text similar to a paper, MIT is likely too permissive while CC-BY-SA is too restrictive.

I feel like CC-BY is more appropriate (and most used for open access papers), but the function should report that to the users, pointing to https://choosealicense.com/ if they want to choose something else.

See also what we suggest in our checklist recipe:

## License
<!--

The license is the open source license for the code and documentation in this repository, not the checklist data (that you can define in dwc_mapping.Rmd). As your repository is based on https://github.com/trias-project/checklist-recipe, we'd like it if you kept the open and permissive MIT license. You're welcome to add your name as a copyright holder (because your are for your own code contributions), which you can do in the LICENSE file. If you want to release your repository under a different license, please indicate somehow that it was based on https://github.com/trias-project/checklist-recipe. We know, licenses are complicated. See https://choosealicense.com/ for more information.

-->

florisvdh commented 3 years ago

I follow the philosophy of making users aware of choices that are made, and of how to alter them.

ThierryO commented 3 years ago

setup_source() is intended for repos with Rmarkdown reports. I don't consider those to be software. For R packages we use GPL-3.

peterdesmet commented 3 years ago

Great! In that case I would suggest CC-BY, similar to what is used for most open access papers.

ThierryO commented 3 years ago

The license will depend on the default licence given to all INBO reports. This is being discussed in the internal library working group. For more details contact @hansvancalster.

ThierryO commented 3 years ago

adding a license

setup_source() now sets the CC-BY license unless there is an existing LICENSE file.
create_package() and setup_package() sets a GPL-3 license unless there is an existing LICENSE file.

IMHO one should use setup_source() for repos with mainly Rmarkdown reports, or for code used in a report or paper. Hence a CC-BY license seems appropriate. In a case were GPL-3 or MIT would be more appropriate, you probably should write a package.

checking a license

check_license() checks if the standard GPL-3 license is present.
check_package() runs check_description(), which runs check_license(), thus currently enforcing GPL-3 for packages.
check_source() currently does not run check_license(), thus does not enforce any license.

MIT is currently not supported. A PR that adds MIT support is welcome.

ThierryO commented 3 years ago

Closing this issue as we set CC-BY as default for non-package repositories.

A PR allowing MIT for package is still welcome.