What is the right license to apply to a repository like this?

[mrocklin]

Something creative-commons-y? I'll admit that I don't have much knowledge here.

[martindurant]

Perhaps you should ping some knowledgable people (numfocus?) - I don't think people will notice this issue.

[djhoese]

I think this needs to be figured out sooner rather than later. There are quotes from these stories being put on websites like https://coiled.io/ without permission, proper attribution, and making it seem like the quotes are talking about Coiled rather than just dask. As far as I can tell there still isn't a license on the content in this repository, but that might help clear up how these stories can be used and who to attribute the stories to.

[TomAugspurger]

I think CC0 is fine for this repository.

@djhoese if this were CC-BY and required a link back here, would that have satisfied your issues? IMO, it sounds like the issue is more around the context of how the stories are being presented / quoted. I don't think a simple link back here would solve that.

[djhoese]

I have enough trouble with software licenses so what CC license would work best for this I'm not sure. There are a couple issues I have with the coiled.io usage that may be wrong no matter what license could have been applied to this content in the past. I think the "BY" requirement to mention the creator (I'm reading differences about the licenses here) is the minimum. I'm sure others here will have different opinions, but I question whether or not commercial uses need to be allowed. I also don't know if modifications of the original stories need to be allowed. Beyond typos or URL updates, the story is the story and shouldn't be modified by anyone except the original author.

My issues with the Coiled usage are (I've contacted them via email):

1. I wasn't asked. Maybe it isn't needed since it is in this public repository and doesn't have a license.
2. It is being used for the commercial for-profit company even though the story is about Dask.
3. They attributed the quote to my employer (SSEC, UW-Madison) instead of me. In @rabernat's story they say Pangeo wrote that even though he mentions his employer too.

[djhoese]

To put that all another way: If I had known CC0 is how the story was intended to be used when I wrote it I would have been fine with that, but I would have wanted to state explicitly that it was me, not my employer, writing the story. I think Coiled using a Dask story as their own is wrong either way.

[rabernat]

1. Maybe it isn't needed since it is in this public repository and doesn't have a license.

Code on GitHub that is not accompanied by an explicit open-source license is assumed to be "all rights reserved". For text content, without an explicit license, you (or more precisely, your employer, who owns all of your intellectual property) retain the copyright to what you wrote. You do not have to explicitly claim copyright (ref), although you would have to sue to enforce your copyright. If the material is being used for marketing purposes, it is unlikely to be covered by fair use.

From my point of view, I am happy to license my own story in such a way that it can be used as widely as possible, including in Coiled marketing material. I do agree that explicit licensing here would be important to clarify the allowed usage of these stories.

As a specific step, I would propose that we add a statement to each story that states

• Who owns the copyright to the story
• What is the license for that story. Each contributor can choose whatever they want. It sounds like like @djhoese would like CC BY-NC, which would preclude use by Coiled for marketing. I would be fine with CC 0.

[djhoese]

(or more precisely, your employer, who owns all of your intellectual property)

I'm double checking, but I don't think the University of Wisconsin claims ownership/copyright of employee work outside of work hours (or even during work hours from what my current reading is showing).

I like your statement in #22. I'll see what others have to say and probably add something similar.

[jrbourbeau]

@djhoese apologies your quote was used in that way. @AdiReske has asked the web team to remove it from the coiled.io webpage and it should be down in the next 24 hours

[AdiReske]

It went down almost immediately after we received your email @djhoese as I mentioned in the email to you. This is def not best practice and I have no idea why it was done like that before. It won't happen again.