Closed afeld closed 4 years ago
I made a quick list of license statuses for repositories in this org, to help us think about this:
US public domain + CC0 internationally
US public domain + Apache v2 internationally
AGPL + additions that are US public domain and CC0 internationally
Apache v2
CC0
CC0 but file is slightly confusingly labeled Apache v2
No license
Based on that list, here's a hypothetical way we could turn what seems to be OpenControl's usual practices into a set of recommendations:
Any non-18F folks have strong feelings about this?
@gregelin ^^ thoughts?
@pburkholder @afeld This gets to the governance question. Seems reasonable that any repo that is part of OpenControl must have an open source license.
At moment, I don't have strong opinion regarding requiring a particular open source license. I'm OK with @brittag's recommendations. Happy to add a general/permissive open source license to what GovReady contributes.
Not sure if this should be a tag on this issue (seems like it) or a new one, but the OpenControl fork of my xccdf-tsv tool (mine: https://github.com/adamcrosby/xccdf2tsv OC: https://github.com/opencontrol/xccdf2csv) was updated to include a CC0 license attribution, which is in violation of the terms in the original content (CC-SA, which requires downstream to retain same license). My copyright header is still in the python file, and it says CC-SA, but the repo readme says the license is CC0.
Thanks @adamcrosby - good catch, that fork should have carried forward the license instead of changing it. Checking this, looks like your readme says by-sa but the Python file says by-nc-sa - should the fork carry forward that combination (so people would follow the more restrictive one by default)?
Pinging @JJediny (author of the post-fork commits) to fix this in the fork. :)
@brittag I'll update the original python in the repo to be less restrictive (by-SA is fine). Unsure how you'd like to move that change into the OpenControl repo (I can submit a PR against your repo if that's necessary, or I'm OK with @JJediny just making the edit in his update as well. Thanks!
The FAQ page says the following:
The code portions are all licensed under Apache 2.0, except what has been contributed directly by the US Government, which is in the public domain within the US. Internationally, the US Government licenses its code under Creative Commons Zero 1.0. All written content has been licensed as Creative Commons Zero.
Suggest closing this issue as resolved.
We have a number of repositories with different (or no) license files, and should probably decide on one...or at least a default. At 18F, we use CC0 with an explanation at the top:
https://github.com/18F/open-source-policy/blob/master/LICENSE.md
Would be simplest for the 18F staff to go with CC0 for consistency on our side (since our contributions are public domain), but not sure if we want to pick something that addresses patents.
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC0_to_computer_software.3F_If_so.2C_is_there_a_recommended_implementation.3F
Thoughts?