Clean up license information and related documentation

[cxw42]

• [x] See if we need to switch to CC-BY-SA 3.0+
• [ ] Make sure all the source files and documentation files consistently assert copyright, list the license, and refer to the contributors
• [ ] Add the copyright, license statement+link, and warranty disclaimer to Settings | Welcome

[cxw42]

Note: I am not a lawyer, and all of this is my best guess :) .

@r4j4h @rwexmd @devinrhode2 @RiotPharaoh @Procyon-b

Thank you again for contributing to TabFern! I would like to clarify that the project is CC-BY-SA 3.0+ ahead of Hacktoberfest. Please let me know if you have any concerns, or reply if you agree. Some details follow.

• I used lots of code from Stack Overflow, and that code was CC-BY-SA 3.0 at the time.
• V3 includes forward compatibility, so (as far as I know as a non-lawyer) V3 code can be used under a V4 license.
• Stack Overflow is moving to CC-BY-SA 4.0, so future things I pull from SO will be V4 :) .
• If all contributors license their contributions V3+, there will be no question about whether V3 or V4 are compatible, because the contributions will be licensed either way.

The biggest change I'm going to make is to change the LICENSE.md file from BY-NC-SA to BY-SA, specifically mentioning "or any later version." I think that BY-NC-SA was an unintentional error on my part. My apologies for any confusion!

[Procyon-b]

It's OK for me. Let me know if you have more text to translate. (maybe you've already asked - see below)

note: I wasn't using/connecting_to github for the most part of this year. At least since the end of january. And I had inadvertently disabled notifications. :( So sorry if I missed previous messages.

[cxw42]

@Procyon-b Thanks for the reply! No worries --- I haven't sent you anything :) . But thank you for letting me know!

[cxw42]

@rugk This project was built on SO answers, so its licensing has to be compatible with SO's license (again, as far as I know, not being a lawyer). I agree that a different license would be better for SO, but that's not my decision.

Trademark claims are normal for software - e g., Linus owns the mark for Linux (or used to). My understanding is that common-law trademarks provide some protection, even if the mark is not yet registered.

[rugk]

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/q/1717/5802

As it is explained there, you can (one-way!) move from BY-SA 4.0 to GPLv3. Also short code snippets from SO can be regarded as excerpts under fair use.

(IANAL)

[cxw42]

@rugk interesting! What about CC-BY-SA 3.0, since that's everything I've used so far from SO? There's also the open 3.0/4.0 situation raised by https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/333089/274096 .

I would not have been able to start this project without SO content - I didn't know enough at the time! I agree that a different license would be preferable, but don't see that I have much choice. I welcome a concrete, lawyer-vetted proposal if you have one! Otherwise, I would certainly appreciate your code contributions under by-sa 3+ if you are willing to make any, or non-coding assistance (which doesn't raise the same concerns). I appreciate your consideration of this question!

Edit for what it's worth, I also license all of my own SO answers for use under cc-by, because the SA requirement has sometimes rendered SO content unusable in other projects.

[cxw42]

@r4j4h @devinrhode2 @RiotPharaoh ping - CC-BY-SA 3.0+ OK with you?

[r4j4h]

Sorry for the delay, I am ok with this change :)

[cxw42]

@r4j4h much appreciated! Hope all is going well!

[SamHasler]

I'm just going to note this here, not that it makes any difference to me (I came across the license whilst looking at CONTRIBUTING.md, this won't stop me).

Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software?

We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses listed as free by the Free Software Foundation and listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative.

Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses.

Version 4.0 of CC’s Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license is one-way compatible with the GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3). This compatibility mechanism is designed for situations in which content is integrated into software code in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish the two. There are special considerations required before using this compatibility mechanism. Read more about it here.

Also, the CC0 Public Domain Dedication is GPL-compatible and acceptable for software. For details, see the relevant CC0 FAQ entry.

While we recommend against using a CC license on software itself, CC licenses may be used for software documentation, as well as for separate artistic elements such as game art or music.

— https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software

I'm guessing the last paragraph might mean that it's an appropriate license for translations?

[cxw42]

Sam, no idea :) . The choice of CC was made for me when I started pulling code from Stack Overflow (which I no longer do, and I ask others not do here, because of the license-version confusion).