Arvados

Peter Amstutz wrote:

In particular, Apache 2.0 and CC 3.0 have requirements that you redistribute the license itself, that is onerous for code snippets that are specifically intended to be incorporated into the user's own software.

On brief research, something like BSD-0 or MIT-0 ?

My highly opinionated opinion is that having a patent license is table stakes for a FOSS license in the 21st century. CC recommends against using their licenses for software and this is one of the reasons. This also rules out all the cutesy minimalist "zero" licenses.

I understand why the license distribution requirement is awkward but it seems like a solvable problem to me. Couldn't the license itself be one of the files added to the user's installer repository?

If we expanded our license boilerplate to include the text suggested in the license itself, including the link to the full text, that would even strengthen the case that everybody was trying to do the right thing even if the license file gets detached from everything else. It's just three wrapped lines of text plus one for a URL.

The cookbook examples might as well be under the ASF license anyway: they all use the SDK, which is under the same license, so any code that incorporates them would already be subject to all those requirements.

Brett Smith wrote in #note-7:

Peter Amstutz wrote:

In particular, Apache 2.0 and CC 3.0 have requirements that you redistribute the license itself, that is onerous for code snippets that are specifically intended to be incorporated into the user's own software.

On brief research, something like BSD-0 or MIT-0 ?

My highly opinionated opinion is that having a patent license is table stakes for a FOSS license in the 21st century. CC recommends against using their licenses for software and this is one of the reasons. This also rules out all the cutesy minimalist "zero" licenses.

Do you mean the license including a patent grant, or that the license states that someone who uses your software won't use patents against you?

Just to confuse things even more, the two files that are definitely code, installer.sh and provision.sh, have SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-3.0 at the top.

I understand why the license distribution requirement is awkward but it seems like a solvable problem to me. Couldn't the license itself be one of the files added to the user's installer repository?

Yea, it could be, it copies a bunch of stuff already.

If we expanded our license boilerplate to include the text suggested in the license itself, including the link to the full text, that would even strengthen the case that everybody was trying to do the right thing even if the license file gets detached from everything else. It's just three wrapped lines of text plus one for a URL.

Could you give an example of how this would look?

For the code cookbook example, if you refer a customer to the cookbook, and they take a section and stick into their program, with changes, what is a reasonable expectation that they'll attribute the code or license? It seems counterproductive to set up obligations that nobody will respect in practice, we just want to make sure we protect ourselves.

It feels like there ought to be a "right" answer here. I did some brief research and it seems that Stack Overflow (for example) requires everything be licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0, and obviously that gets copied without attribution all the time. Although as you note, CC itself recommends against that.

Peter Amstutz wrote in #note-9:

Do you mean the license including a patent grant, or that the license states that someone who uses your software won't use patents against you?

The former.

Could you give an example of how this would look?

# Copyright (C) The Arvados Authors. All rights reserved.
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
# 
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

For the code cookbook example, if you refer a customer to the cookbook, and they take a section and stick into their program, with changes, what is a reasonable expectation that they'll attribute the code or license?

If they don't, then they're breaking the license on the SDK already.

Thoughts on BSD+patent?

https://opensource.org/license/bsdpluspatent/

This still has the attribution clauses, we could drop those, although I don't know if we'd effectively be creating our own non-standand license at that point.

We want people to feel free to copy our samples and templates into their own code, without any concerns about attribution or infringement. That's what is happening anyway, I don't want the license to put people in a position of technically infringing.