Licensing metadata

[jgmill]

At OPSD, we (@ingmars, @LionHirth) are wondering how we can specify a separate license for the datapackage.json file.

As far as I understand, the licenses property refers to the data package as a whole. How can we specify that a license only applies to a part of the data package, in this case the metadata?

[Stephen-Gates]

This may help https://frictionlessdata.io/docs/applying-licenses/

Apply a license to the Data Package and a potentially different license to the resources

[jgmill]

Thank you for the hint! So we should list the datapackage.json file explicitly as one of the resources and specify the license there?

[Stephen-Gates]

Sorry that I wasn't clear. From the link I provided (emphasis added by me) ...

It is recommended to that you apply a license, waiver or public domain mark to a data package using the licenses property. The value assigned to the data package licenses property applies to all the data, files and metadata in the data package unless specified otherwise.

You can optionally apply a license to a data resource. This allows a license that differs from the data package license to be applied to the data resource. If the data resource licenses property is not specified, it inherits the data package licenses.

So, say you want to license the metadata (i.e. the datapackage.json) as CC0 but license the data as CC BY SA, you'd have the following in your datapackage.json...

{
  "name": "my-data-package",
  "licenses": [{
      "name": "CC0-1.0",
      "title": "CC0 1.0",
      "path": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/"
    }],
  "resources": [{
      "name": "my-data",
      "path": "my-data.xls",
      "licenses": [{
          "name": "CC-BY-SA-4.0",
          "title": "Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0",
          "path": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }]
    }]
}

[jgmill]

Ok that makes sense for the question I asked. However, I should have been more precise in my question: In our case, we can not actually grant a license for our data, but we wanted to at least license the metadata. In order to be explicit about that, do you think we could explicitly list the datapackage.json among the resources and specify the license there?

[augusto-herrmann]

In many jurisdictions metadata information many not be licensable simply because, for being merely factual information, it does not meet the creative step requirement and is thus not copyrightable at all, So it would be automatically in the public domain. I do not know, however, if there is a jurisdiction where it would be really necessary to apply a license to metadata. If you can provide us with such an use case, it would help with presenting the need for it to be included in the standard.

[rufuspollock]

@jgmill my sense would be that if you are not licensing the data and you just want to license the metadata i'd state that somewhere else than the package descriptor: Maybe just put it in the description of the package (i.e. the README).

The case you are describing is like a software packaging system needing a field for the metadata licensing as opposed to the code licensing and I imagine is reasonably unusual 😄 (and as @augusto-herrmann points out you may not have anything to license most of the time).

[rufuspollock]

WONTFIX. I'm closing as WONTFIX and adding label as FAQ as we won't change the spec and we have a resolution that is usable. Once we have a proper FAQ page this can get added.