Question about licensing

[d...@plexoos.com]

Hi,

I have a question for those who, like myself, develop software while being employed by a national lab in the US. Do I understand correctly that there is no need to include neither the lab nor other funding agencies (e.g. DOE) in the copyright notice? I have not seen anything like this but in a private discussion someone suggested that the organization I work for may have some rights in the produced code. Is that so, or I completely misunderstand this?

I recently found out that I had to include an OS license in my projects in order to run coverity scans over the code (their requirement). So, I included the MIT license (https://github.com/plexoos/travex/blob/master/LICENSE.txt) essentially copyrighting "by all contributing authors" but then on second thought I realized there might be other owners who do not directly contribute to the project... I would really like to learn about the experience of those in a similar situation.


Thank you,
Dmitri

[Giacomo Tenaglia]

On Monday, June 27, 2016 at 5:54:50 AM UTC+2, d...@plexoos.com wrote:

Hi,

Hello Dmitri,

sorry for the late reply.

I don't have direct experience with your situation in any of my software projects, but I give you my opinion as I am the person who is taking over the responsibility to follow up the licensing of Open Source Software at CERN.

 

I have a question for those who, like myself, develop software while being employed by a national lab in the US. Do I understand correctly that there is no need to include neither the lab nor other funding agencies (e.g. DOE) in the copyright notice? I have not seen anything like this but in a private discussion someone suggested that the organization I work for may have some rights in the produced code. Is that so, or I completely misunderstand this?

In general, what matters is:

1. Any written agreement with your employer with regard to software developed while being employed;

2. The ownership of that particular software.

For 1, you should check with your employer. It is not very common to have developers sign special agreements, especially in research/education.

For 2, if the owner of the software is a legal entity (a company, not for profit organisation etc), then the contributors are usually requested to sign some kind of contributor agreement where the developer agrees that the organisation re-distributes the software under the current project license etc. This is for example the case of contributing code to the Ubuntu Linux distribution [1].

The important thing to note here is that CERN experiments are collaborations, and *not* legal entities. On the other hand CERN is a legal entity, and defines [2] as "software owned in whole or in part by CERN" also "software that results from, or is substantially based on, a member of the personnel's activities within the Organization or on its behalf, except as may be otherwise stipulated by the Organization in its agreements and memoranda of understanding".

 

I recently found out that I had to include an OS license in my projects in order to run coverity scans over the code (their requirement). So, I included the MIT license (https://github.com/plexoos/travex/blob/master/LICENSE.txt) essentially copyrighting "by all contributing authors" but then on second thought I realized there might be other owners who do not directly contribute to the project... I would really like to learn about the experience of those in a similar situation.

For software owned in whole or in part by CERN, our recommendations are to:

1. Release it as Open Source, and copy the verbatim text of the license in the source code repository;

2. Use by default the GPLv3 license. Exceptions should be limited to: LGPLv3 (in the case of a library) and Apache v2 (when the development is constrained by existing agreements, for example with funding agencies);

3. Include a statement in the header *of each source file* acknowledging (i) the copyright of CERN and other copyright owners as applicable; (ii) the applicable licence, and; (iii) CERN’s special status as an Intergovernmental Organization.

Specifically, the copyright notice should be as follows:

- "© Copyright [year] CERN" (for software owned solely by CERN)

- "© Copyright [year] CERN [for the benefit of the [Name of appropriate group] Collaboration]" (for software developed by a collaboration but owned by CERN)

- "© Copyright [year] CERN and [name of other copyright holders]" (for software owned by CERN and external partner(s) in small collaborations)

- "© Copyright [year] Copyright Holders of [name of the collaboration or joint project]. See [https://link] for details of the Copyright Holders" (for software owned by CERN and external partners in large collaborations)

So, checking your project, let's start with the ownership. I don't have enough information/knowledge to say whether your project should be considered "owned in whole in part by CERN". I would say yes, as it is based on ROOT? If we assume so, then checking the 3 points above:

1. OK.

2. MIT is a "lightweight" permissive license[3] where there is no obligation to re-distribute the code. Note that when re-licensing a project, one should get the agreement of *all* copyright owners as per copyright statement above. However, in case of a permissive license, it is easier as it is technically enough to "fork and re-license" the whole project.

3. Again this depends on the nature of the project.. in this case I would use something like "© Copyright [year] CERN for the benefit of the HEP Software Foundation" or "© Copyright [year] Copyright Holders of the HEP Software Foundation".

I now realise I've written quite a bit more than a short answer to a short question.. I hope everything is clear and that answer would be useful also for others.

Also, I would be happy to accept corrections from other HSF experts reading this list.

Cheers,

Giacomo

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/legal/contributors/licence-agreement-faq

[2] Section 2 of "Final Report from the Task Force on Open Source Software License at CERN", http://cds.cern.ch/record/1482206/files/Final%20Report%20from%20the%20Task%20Force%20on%20%20Open%20Source%20Software%20Licence%20.pdf

[3] There are plenty of websites for comparing licenses, for example: http://choosealicense.com/licenses/