Legal problem with Stackoverflow contribution under the "Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0" license

[dchab...@gmail.com]

Hi,

In Boost 1.62.0 we saw in the following header file : boost/thread/win32/thread_primitives.hpp

that the function inline ticks_type __stdcall GetTickCount64emulation()

is a contribution coming from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8211820/userland-interrupt-timer-access-such-as-via-kequeryinterrupttime-or-similar

This causes legal problem as Stackoverflow contributiona are under the "Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0" license which is not permissive.

Is someone aware about that?

Is there any remedy planned?

Thanks

Dominique

[Rene Rivera]

This should really be brought up in the dev list.

--

-- Rene Rivera
-- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything
-- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net

[Niall Douglas]

On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 4:32:25 PM UTC, dchab...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

In Boost 1.62.0 we saw in the following header file : boost/thread/win32/thread_primitives.hpp

that the function inline ticks_type __stdcall GetTickCount64emulation()

is a contribution coming from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8211820/userland-interrupt-timer-access-such-as-via-kequeryinterrupttime-or-similar

That code was borrowed by me.

 

This causes legal problem as Stackoverflow contributiona are under the "Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0" license which is not permissive.

Is someone aware about that?

Is there any remedy planned?

 

Explanatory text is under the CCA, but code snippets are under MIT which is a licence compatible with Boost. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271114/code-licensing-change-for-all-se-sites

Niall

[Niall Douglas]

Looking at this again, it looks like the linked borrowed code predates the StackOverflow licence change.

The link back to the relevant SO page complies with the CC-BY-SA attribution clause. In most jurisdictions such a small snippet would be either uncopyrightable, or fall under fair use, so the copyleft requirement would not apply. But IANAL.

BTW this is hardly the only instance of code borrowed from StackOverflow in Boost. There are many instances, some without the attribution.

Niall

[dchab...@gmail.com]

Hi Niall,

Thanks for your feedback.

The relicensing to MIT is told to be in place starting Feb 1, 2016 and only for new contributions.

But the StackOverflow contribution that has been borrowed in Boost is Nov 23, 2011.

Dominique