Slides:
https://softwaresaved.github.io/software-licensing-workshop/licensingforresearchers.html
Materials:
https://github.com/softwaresaved/software-licensing-workshop
These materials are licensed under the CC-BY 4.0 license.
Neil Chue Hong, Software Sustainability Institute
Email: N.ChueHong@software.ac.uk
Twitter: @npch
ORCID: 0000-0002-8876-7606
The development of this workshop was made possible by funding from EPSRC, ESRC and BBSRC through grants EP/H043160/1 and EP/N006410/1 for the UK Software Sustainability Institute.
The materials for this workshop were originally developed by Neil Chue Hong, based on material from Neil Chue Hong and Shoaib Sufi, qLegal, and OSS-Watch. It was originally commissioned for workshops at Cambridge University and the TRAC2018 conference. Thanks to everyone at the Software Sustainability Institute for their support.
(this is not legal advice, only opinion)
Official permission to do something, within limits:
Commonly used to exploit Intellectual Property:
Intellectual Property: legal rights (IPRs) from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields
Patent: Protects ‘new’ ideas and has an ‘inventive step’ that is not obvious to someone who works in the subject area
Copyright: Protection of a tangible manifestation of an idea; e.g. a book or source/object code
License: An agreement or permission that grants a right to use - often in the form of a contract
Publishing in a public place does not automatically grant rights to use.
No license worse than a restrictive licence.
Often your employer may own the IP you generate as part of your job. The right licence will allow you to exploit it.
A licence allows you to set out the conditions of use.
A licence clearly sets out what people can do, and what you are liable for.
Choosing the right license will help you exploit your work outside the university.
A legal instrument governs the permission you are granting to others to use or distribute the work you hold the copyright on:
Covers: presentations, posters, publications, blogs...
Onus is on you as the user to ensure you have right to use
Free-to-view doesn't automatically mean free to re-use
Creators of texts, images, datasets and creative works increasingly use Creative Commons licences to enable reuse.
For software, there are open source licenses
Sometimes even using your own photos may not be risk-free
Even if out of copyright, the gallery may have a policy that doesn't exempt educational use. Or the object may contain sensitive information.
In many countries you own the copyright of images taken in a public space, but in some - such as Italy - do not allow 'freedom of panorama'
In most cases, the most useful information on understanding the use of copyrighted works will come from your library
"Publishing data in a reusable form to support findings must be mandatory"
"Open access to scientific research data enhances data quality, reduces the need for duplication of research, speeds up scientific progress and helps to combat scientific fraud."
“As bodies charged with investing public money in research, the Research Councils take very seriously their responsibilities in making the outputs from this research publicly available – not just to other researchers, but also to potential users in business, charitable and public sectors, and to the general tax‐paying public.” - http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/
“Publicly funded research data are a public good, produced in the public interest, which should be made openly available with as few restrictions as possible in a timely and responsible manner that does not harm intellectual property.” - http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/datapolicy/
Research organisations are not expected to assume responsibility for software not produced within their own organisation
Not all software must be shared, if there are ethical, legal or commercial reasons
Does your organisation or funder already have a preferred licence?
Who do you want to reuse your data?
Do you want derived works released under similar terms?
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/license-research-data
The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management: doi: 10.1038/sdata.2016.18
Pros
Cons
Ground rules for decision making, participation, communication and sharing.
Open source software philosophy is more than the license
Best practice identified from OSS projects useful for managing all types of software projects/products
Open source licensed software != Open development
Can use open development practices in closed source projects
Image courtesy of David A. Wheeler, licensed under CC-BY-SA