About licenses and specifically about CC licenses
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Jacob Barhak
Apr 28, 2021, 10:40:57 AM4/28/21
to lice...@numfocus.org
Ok Andy,
This public email list is a good solution. I signed up for the new group and redirected the discussion there by BCCing the main group.
When you have the meeting minutes available, please post them there so they can be viewed publicly to start the discussion.
I am not sure about the committee charter rules - I am more interested in figuring out what is really going on.
Jacob
On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 8:30 AM Andy Ray Terrel <andy....@gmail.com> wrote:
--Okay one more response. I was maybe too hungry in my last response.My last statement from the board meeting was imprecise.
On April 6, the board discussed adding Creative Commons licenses to the NumFOCUS default accepted license. The proposal was rejected by a majority vote. The notes will be available in coming weeks.I like the idea of splitting this conversation to a different open place for those interested. To this end, I have created the list lice...@numfocus.org. Please feel free to join that list at: https://groups.google.com/a/numfocus.org/g/licensing/If we would like to propose a subcommittee on licensing, here is a charter template. Perhaps that could be a good first topic over at the new group.-- Andy
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Andy Terrel
Apr 28, 2021, 10:52:51 AM4/28/21
to NumFOCUS Licensing Group, jacob....@gmail.com
We have told you what is really going on. The board voted and the motion was rejected.
The board wants to defer to the wisdom of the OSI for determining what open source licenses are truly open source and can be protected from a legal perspective. We are not lawyers and do not strife to be lawyers. Accepting their best practices as our guidance is just like projects accepting our best practices on data science project governance, community engagement, and education.
My comment about companies comes from both the number of companies that allow OSI approved licenses to their work. The anecdotal evidence of community members saying they are not able to contribute to CC0 licensed codes. Thus making CC0 an acceptable default license puts more burdon on contributers rather than less. Any project can have a CC0 license if they apply for an exception, but as far as I know, no project has been rejected because of the CC0 license. If you would like to know the companies that sponsor our work you can see that at: https://numfocus.org/sponsors
Jacob Barhak
Apr 28, 2021, 11:13:04 AM4/28/21
to Andy Terrel, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Sorry Andy,
Meeting minutes includes information like:
1. Who attended in the meeting
2. What was discussed
3. Who voted what
I am adding the entire thread where the discussion tool place for history:
You reply from April 14th is quote as follows:
"Since so many companies do not recognize CC0 as an acceptable default license, the NumFOCUS board does not wish to make it one of the defaults for our fiscal sponsorship"
The words "so many" means more than one - If want to see what was discussed in the meeting - it is a legitimate request. I want to know the exact names mentioned in the discussion. Hopefully those were recorded.
If you stick to the "OSI approved" logo because you don't know better - this means you did not explore the topic fully - therefore your decision is rushed.
When we spoke in private you admitted you didn't know about all this controversy with CC0 license. It took me less than half an hour to explain some things - you personally did not know enough so I assume your board knew even less about what I am suggesting.
At the end of our meeting you did see a reason to bring the topic of adding all CC licenses to the board to broaden your definition of open. If you saw the reason - I am surprised the other board members did not and I am curious what really happened.
Are CC licenses not legal? They are used widely all over the world, why reject them because OSI did not include them. And do note that other open organizations do support them. Why not NumFocus?
Your laconic responses indicate you did not study the issue carefully - this is why I ask for the full meeting minutes. So please provide those before we continue the discussion. It will make it much more informative.
Jacob
Andy Terrel
Apr 28, 2021, 11:38:09 AM4/28/21
to Jacob Barhak, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
You are correct the minutes will have a list of who attended, the topic discussed and the vote.
I do not have a list of companies that will not allow contributions to CC0 codes. In the original thread, I corrected that statement.
I am not a lawyer and will not comment on the viability of the CC licenses in the courts. It is my understanding that if they were a viable license that could be protected in the courts, the OSI would have approved them.
I do not see a list of codes using CC0 so I cannot accept the claim that it is used widely.
The reason for laconic replies is the hostile tone that has been created in the original thread.
Jacob Barhak
Apr 28, 2021, 1:42:06 PM4/28/21
to Andy Terrel, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Ok Andy.
There is no hostility here - yet I am criticizing and showing alternatives - what is interpreted as hostility is unrelenting targeting of faults - this is part of criticism. If I did not react the way I did the topic would be set aside and neglected without proper attention. It is not the first time I am criticising NumFocus - until now NumFocus has a perfect record of correcting things - this is why I am still investing effort in this - you adapt and learn. Hopefully it will happen again.
If you correct things, I will yield - and you did correct the fact there there are no multiple companies discussed in the meeting - thus we need to examine exactly what was discussed and why the decision was made. I await the meeting minutes.
If the real reason is not having an expert in licensing, this can be corrected - there are people that are experts in the field that may be interested, yet you have to be honest about the reason. Laconic answers do not help promote the topic, especially if they need correction - this is not proper and I am glad it is being corrected.
If you want examples of entities that use CC licenses, I provided those before in my email on April 14th. Here is a direct link to the message:
"
Look at two organizations that provide now content under CC0:
I recently learned that Covasim is released under another CC license:
"
Note that the last link is from an institution supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The developer will give a talk at the Austin python meetup on April 12th - so you can ask him about the choice of license.
I think those examples are enough to show that CC and CC0 licenses are being used. OSI is only one organization that deals with licenses and there are others that approved those for software.
Moreover, here is a white paper draft that we are working on at the Multiscale Modeling Viral Pandemic working group:
I must add that this draft is not final and not yet published through a 3rd party, yet you can find a discussion on licenses there. Not having proper licenses has a negative effect on development.
And CC0 does solve some of those issues.
I myself make code public under CC0 - here is an example to be presented in PyCon Israel this weekend:
This license is especially suitable for tutorials and examples that people can copy from - in fact it is superior to MIT/BSD in that regard for such code that is meant for reuse.
I know this is all new., and yes CC0 is relatively new compared to older licenses, yet NumFocus needs to modernize and adapt to new definitions of open.
Hopefully this is a good restart for a proper discussion.
Jacob
Stefan van der Walt
Apr 29, 2021, 12:23:29 AM4/29/21
to lice...@numfocus.org
Hi Jakob,
On Wed, Apr 28, 2021, at 10:41, Jacob Barhak wrote:
If the real reason is not having an expert in licensing, this can be corrected - there are people that are experts in the field that may be interested, yet you have to be honest about the reason. Laconic answers do not help promote the topic, especially if they need correction - this is not proper and I am glad it is being corrected.
Several well informed people gave good reasons on the thread for why CC0 is a complex license. That said, there is no impediment to CC0-licensed packages applying for NumFOCUS sponsorship.
CC0 is difficult to interpret, is not readily adopted by other packages (and therefore causes confusion among users), and furthermore causes problems for certain industry participants; therefore, I do not think it is appropriate for us to recommend it for our libraries.
Licenses like MIT are extremely straightforward. I also cannot agree with you about the problems caused by those licenses; citing someone for their work, even indefinitely, is simply not a problem.
Data and software should be dealt with differently. I agree that CC0 is the license that makes most sense for data.
I recently learned that Covasim is released under another CC license:
As far as I know, CC-BY-SA 4.0 is permissive and compatible with BSD, MIT, etc. Yet, it is not very often used (likely because of the inherent disadvantages to license proliferation).
I myself make code public under CC0 - here is an example to be presented in PyCon Israel this weekend:This license is especially suitable for tutorials and examples that people can copy from - in fact it is superior to MIT/BSD in that regard for such code that is meant for reuse.
I agree on this point; we make all our scikit-image tutorial materials available under CC0, for example.
Now, it is unclear to me what you wish to achieve with this discussion. The board stated that they will consider project applications with CC0 licenses, but we have decided not to recommend it by default. Why is this situation not to your satisfaction?
Best regards,
Stéfan
Jacob Barhak
Apr 29, 2021, 2:24:48 AM4/29/21
to Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Thanks Stefan,
Your response is to the point. You may not think like me, yet you analyze the facts and address them - this is a good start.
If you have no objection for CC0 licenses to apply to NumFocus sponsorship, then please declare it in your web site when you define open:
Under Be Open you have the bullet::
- An OSI approved license
I just ask that you add the following bullet:
- A Creative Commons license
In fact this was Andy's idea when we talked in private and he mentioned he will raise the idea to the board. I am still unsure of what happened. Hopefully the meeting minutes will reveal this.
If you have no objection to CC licenses, then declare it openly.and I will be happy and we can close this topic.
You yourself understand the value of this license for tutorials.And CC0 is used for code - BioModels contains code in CC0 mostly in SBML, yet also in other languages such as matlab. CC0 is superior when you need to share code widely. Also it has properties that allow it to be revived in projects where contributors are no longer responsive or in conflict. The project can get a new life in those situations.
I did not ask to recommend CC0. In fact you can add a bullet about recommending MIT/BSD - those are not bad licenses and are indeed good for many purposes. I will have no objection for you recommending these or even highly recommending them.
What I ask is to be open to new ideas and it seems you personally are open to them, so why not just declare this as an option and let developers choose? If NumFocus provides a larger variety of options to choose from, it only makes it stronger - people may still choose the same, yet having the option is good.
It is possible no one would choose CC licenses initially, yet at least NumFocus as an entity will not be associated with a restriction that defines openness a certain way . NumFocus wording on its web site and the discussion imply that there is a hidden objection to CC licenses. I ask you to formally remove the objection and be as open as you can. There is power in diversity. And having the option to switch to CC0 at an end of life situation of a project will only make NumFocus impact stronger in the future.
I also ask for transparency - this is proper. If you are ok with CC0 as an option, please declare it, if you are not, please explain why. So far in the discussion I did not see a compelling reason why not. I await the meeting minutes to see if there are new explanations.
If you want to form committees for a simple bullet change in a website - please do so, yet if there really is no objection then this discussion can be over in a few minutes to everyone's satisfaction.
Jacob
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Andy Terrel
Apr 29, 2021, 11:22:08 AM4/29/21
to Jacob Barhak, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
We have declared our problems with the CC0 license. Because of those problems we are not accepting all CC licenses by default.
To me the main problem is that it is not supported by the OSI. We use the OSI to represent our interests and guide us on legal matters. Accepting licenses outside their recommendations would incur legal fees to represent the project's needs.
Many other problems exist and have been argued by the community, but if one was to find another legal group willing to represent us at nominal to no fees I would be willing to entertain this license further.
-- Andy
--
Jacob Barhak
Apr 29, 2021, 12:15:53 PM4/29/21
to Andy Terrel, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Sorry Andy,
You are contradicting yourself from when we talked in private. You yourself came up with the idea of approving all CC license family. I was only discussing CC0 at that point in time.
And note the othen open source organizations such as FSF do not exclude CC0. So why stick to OSI blindly? CC is a respectable and widely used license family- your current argument of sticking to OSI under all evidence presented makes no sense, especially after you yourself came up with the CC family idea.
I want to see the meeting minutes in full. You changed your position and version several times by now - I want to know what influences you from the formal recordings. This discussion should continue after the meeting minutes become public and information about what happened is fully revealed.
Hopefully this will happen soon.
Jacob
Andy Terrel
Apr 29, 2021, 2:29:18 PM4/29/21
to Jacob Barhak, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Call me the mad hatter. Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast
Jacob Barhak
Apr 29, 2021, 2:57:34 PM4/29/21
to Andy Terrel, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Well Andy,
It is not about personal style or preferences. It is about the nature of an organization. Please provide the necessary documentation I asked for so we can proceed. It will be better this way.
Jacob
Andy Terrel
Apr 29, 2021, 3:29:18 PM4/29/21
to Jacob Barhak, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
As has been stated multiple times, the board minutes will be ready in the coming weeks. Per the usual roberts rules, minutes are ratified at the next meeting, then our secretary will publish them.
Reasonable people can have ideas in one meeting then realize they are bad ideas in the next meeting. Doing so does not imply an organization is not open or transparent.
Jacob Barhak
Apr 29, 2021, 3:33:35 PM4/29/21
to Andy Terrel, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Well Andy,
Multiple times things were also corrected in the past, so let us continue the discussion when the meeting minutes are out.
And if things fluctuate so much, perhaps they can fluctuate again towards a proper resolution.
Jacob
Andy Terrel
Apr 29, 2021, 3:50:20 PM4/29/21
to Jacob Barhak, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Proper should not be defined as "What Jacob wants"
Jacob Barhak
Apr 29, 2021, 4:22:00 PM4/29/21
to Andy Terrel, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Sorry Andy,
This comment is against your own rules of :be kind".
Proper means proper documentation of the process - I will wait for that documentation to appear to continue discussion properly. We do need a non fluctuating base for discussion. Not changing versions. This is proper.
Jacob
Andy Terrel
Apr 29, 2021, 4:46:01 PM4/29/21
to Jacob Barhak, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
I disagree, but you are welcome to submit a CoC violation. https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct
The implication that I was not being "proper" is itself hostile and unkind, a trend you continue to pursue despite many folks asking you to stop.
Jacob Barhak
Apr 29, 2021, 5:27:28 PM4/29/21
to Andy Terrel, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
No worries Andy,
No complaint will be filed - I am just asking you to take this discussion seriously and be factual.and correct about your exploration of the topic. My intention is to get you to understand what I am asking and in fact it seems Stefan started picking up some advantages of CC0 and acknowledging those - so I already see some success in this discussion.
The next substantial stage is waiting for the formal meeting minutes to be published.
Once those are out, it would help if you redirect a link to this discussion thread.
Jacob
Jacob Barhak
Nov 6, 2021, 5:50:00 PM11/6/21
to Andy Terrel, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Greetings,
It seems the license issues are being floated again.
Recently a PyData sponsored project has closed this issue:
Andy, it is time you make the decisions transparent - please point to the meeting minutes from the original discussion I asked for long ago.
It is important to trace back the reasons to the discussion that took place.
Jacob
Jacob Barhak
Dec 27, 2021, 5:43:24 PM12/27/21
to Andy Terrel, Stefan van der Walt, NumFOCUS Licensing Group
Greeting again,
It has been over half a year since the licensing discussion. Perhaps it is time for Numfocus to release the meeting minutes with regards to considering CC licenses - it is only proper and there has been plenty of time.
Hopefully those will appear in public soon.
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