A-Primer-on-Open-License.srt

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Hao Ye: Hello. So hi, I'm here
to talk to you very briefly

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about open licenses. The slides
that I'm sharing are shared with

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a creative commons BY license,
developed by open life science

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and then modified by me, I am
not a lawyer, I only played one

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on board games. Okay,
so a little bit about me, I am

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the reproducibility librarian at
the Health Science Center

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libraries at the University of
Florida. My pronouns are he/his

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and my Twitter handle is 
@how_and_Y, do feel free to

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reach out to me if you have
questions about research,

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reproducibility or other related
topics. So the goal and talking

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about licensing in the context
of open life science is an open

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projects is we would like other
people to be able to use, remix,

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and share our the work that
we're doing in our open

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projects. And we achieve that by
making sure that we have in our

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open projects, explicit
documentation about how other

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people can use and remix and
share it. And so we're going to

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go through these slides. And
hopefully, if there's time, you

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know, have the ability to have
short discussion or answer any

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quick questions about this, with
the goal being that you will

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eventually know and understand
the importance, and how exactly

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to do the task of adding an open
license to your work. Okay. And

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so going back to kind of the
intent behind all of this, the

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open leadership framework which talks
about open leaders, as designing

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and building projects that
empower others, right, we think

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about, were doing these
projects, because usually,

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because we care about doing work
that, you know, helps other

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people, whether those are people
in our communities or outside

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our communities. And so that's
kind of where we think about one

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way in which, you know, we do
that interaction is by having

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our work be shared in a way that
other people can, can use it.

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And so this falls in this box of
the open leadership framework of

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building for sharing and making
sure that we have explicitly in

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the building of our project, a
way that we share the work.

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Okay, so some some
misconceptions that I think I

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want to address when talking
about licensing. Because it is a

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it is a complex topic, and it
does relate to things like

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copyright, and academic credit.
But licensing is not the same

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thing. And so some brief kind of
points to make really quickly,

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just because you share something
on the internet, or GitHub or

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someone else share something on
the internet, or GitHub does not

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automatically allow other people
to use it. If you are sharing

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work with a license, it does not
by default, give away your

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copyright. So you can share work
with a free license and an open

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license like Creative Commons,
that does not prevent you from

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publishing your work or selling
your work or in other ways

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monetizing your work. And
finally, a work that has been

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shared with an open license, you
can use it and other people can

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use it, they don't have to cite
you necessarily. So it can be

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legal to use the work without
citing you. But in an academic

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setting, if you are doing an
academic research, that's still

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considered a violation of
academic ethics. And that is

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something that you would pursue
if it's a problem using academic

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means. Because that can be
plagiarism. Okay, so some some

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kind of common elements. When we
talk about licenses, there are

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of course, many different ways
you can, you can give other

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people permissions on so many
different example licenses. And

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the kinds of things that we
think about in terms of

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including in the open license
are how people can use your

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work, how people can modify your
work, and how they can share

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your work and redistribute
either the original or the

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modified work to other people.
And so, yeah,

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some of these elements also
include attribution. So a lot of

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the open licenses that are in
use generally require that if the

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work is being reshare by someone
else, that the job Original

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authors are credited. So
examples of this are the

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Creative Commons by license,
which has a this attribution

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clause, and almost all the other
licenses that will be mentioned

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today. And one exception to this
one important exception to this

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is the Creative Commons zero
license, which effectively is

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putting something into the
public domain and waiving your

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copyright to, to whatever it is
that you are sharing using the

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CC zero license. So some some
kind of advance advanced

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complications within this topic
of open license. So I've put

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these as I list these as
wrinkles, because they are

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relevant to kind of consider,
but maybe don't think too much

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about making sure you understand
all the details of it. Open

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licenses have this distinction
between what we call copyleft

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and non copyleft. licenses,
which basically have to do with

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whether modifications of a work
have to be shared under the same

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principles. The idea with the
copyleft licenses. So something

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like the GNU Public License, the
GPL is that if someone writes a

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piece of software and shares it
with that license, a company

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can't just build off of that
software, and then sell their

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modifications, they also have to
distribute their modifications

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in the same license. And that
way, if there's a way of

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ensuring that kind of, if you're
going to use something in the

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copyleft world, that you also
contribute to that world. And

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this is not true for licenses
that are permissive, but not in

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the copyleft scheme. And we
generally prefer those in the

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kind of open licensing world.
And I think for, you know, open

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life science, we don't
necessarily want to be overly

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restrictive with how people can
reuse our work. But that is if

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that is something that is
important to you, that is

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something to consider. The next
thing is that patents are also

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not related to copyright, which
are not are not the same thing

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as licensing. So copyright
rights include the ability to

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copy, modify, and redistribute
work. And patent rights include

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the ability to use make and sell
work. And so this generally

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tends to come up when you're
talking about software, in that

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open source licenses for
software may or may not

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explicitly include something
that grants patent rights. And

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this is a whole big can of
worms. So I'll just say if you

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are writing software, and you
have a plan to patant the

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software in any way, definitely
talk to a lawyer before thinking

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before just slapping an open
license and expecting that your

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patent rights will be preserved.
Okay, that was a lot. So let's

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go into the the kind of details
of how you go about applying the

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license. So a license file is
usually named license in all

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caps, and it goes in the root
directory or the top most folder

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of your project. And you can
definitely include multiple

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licenses. And that's important
because you might have different

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components of your project that
you want to apply different

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licenses to. And that's kind of
important because licenses that

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are best for software are not
ideal for content, like images

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or writing, and in the reverse
as well. And so there are ways

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that you can specify in the
license section of your README,

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or the license file exactly
which parts of your project are

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associated with which license.
So again, data and code and

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creative works are not the same
thing. And so you may require

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different licenses on here's an
interesting tweet I saw earlier

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this week about this topic that
is relevant. And so ways that

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you can add a license to your
project in GitHub, if you are

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creating a new repository and
GitHub, there's a section at the

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bottom where you can initialize
the repository by clicking that

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checkbox.

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And then you can choose a
license from among a number of

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built in defaults to GitHub. So
that's a way you can just start

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out a project with a license.
But if you already have a

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project on GitHub, there's
another way you can add one of

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these license templates. Which
is when you use the feature to

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add a new file. If you start
typing the file name, license in

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all caps, a button pops up,
which lets you choose a licensed

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template. And that's also really
handy to have in that, again,

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you don't have to go look for
the full text of a license and

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get the file. If you're just
working in GitHub. Those are

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built in defaults. Some useful
tools for exploring the

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different possible licenses you
might want to use. creative

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comments has a website that goes
through kind of the different

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creative commons license says
including the CC zero public

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domain license and the variants
of the CC by which include

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requirements, for instance, for
attribution, or not letting

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people create derivatives of the
work. Software, again is

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different, there are different
licenses for software. So

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hopefully, this table gives you
a brief guide to some of these

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possible licenses. And then the
websites themselves have more

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detailed information that are
useful for you. Again, more

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resources, if you would like to
learn more about this very

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complex legal topic in
detail. But I will just sum up

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this content in that you if
you're building a open project,

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and you want others to build off
of your work and use it, you

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need a license. And that license
is going to be this top level

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file whose name is license. If
you have code and data in

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different content in your
project, you will want to use a

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different license for those
different types of content. And

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then some good permissive
defaults, if you're working with

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code is to share a code using
the MIT license. If you are

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sharing writing or documents or
images, the CC by license or for

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data that you use the CC zero
license, which effectively puts

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it into public domain