Software Licenses & Copyright
Important: I AM NOT A LAWYER!
AKA: IANAL
Copyright
Facts and ideas are not copyrightable.
Expressions of ideas are copyrightable.
Copyright Examples
Game rules are not copyrightable (chess, Go, football, Dungeons & Dragons).
Expressions of game rules are copyrightable.
Copyright Examples 2
A function that computes standard deviation of values: name choices and concept of the function are not copyrightable.
The std() code that actually computes the standard deviation is copyrightable.
Basic Copyright
"Right of First Publication": copyright automatically goes to the first creator of any creative work
(Even if not explicitly specified)
Consequence: if you post software to GitHub without an explicit license, then you own the copyright—even if openly and publicly visible.
By default, no one else is legally allowed to use or modify your work.
Software Licenses
All software codes you make publicly available should be accompanied by a software license describing the terms by which others may use and/or modify your code.
Public Domain
Alternatively, you can put work into the public domain: "This work has been placed in the public domain."
Free for anyone and everyone to use and modify.
Literature examples: Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein
(There are some tricky issues internationally, however.)
Software Licenses
Kinds of software licenses: proprietary, and free/open source (FOSS, FLOSS, OSS)
Pick an existing license. Do not create your own.
Software Licenses
FOSS categories: permissive, and "copyleft"
Permissive licenses: BSD 3-clause, MIT; allow further distribution under any license
Copyleft licenses: GPL; require modifications to be shared under the same license ("viral")
https://choosealicense.com
Open Source Initiative licenses
Which license to use?
When in doubt, use a permissive license like the BSD 3-clause or MIT licenses.
Copyrighting other creative works: Creative Commons
- BY: Attribution
- SA: ShareAlike
- ND: NoDerivatives
- NC: NonCommercial
Licenses: CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-NC
Beyond copyright & licenses
Patents: cover ideas and concepts; modern issues with "patent trolls"
Trademarks: symbols that represent a business or organization
Export control: government may forbid the transfer of source code (and data, ideas) to another country or foreign national without permission
HIPAA compliance: software that deals with human patients must be anonymized
Long story short:
Pick a license when creating a project, and put as LICENSE.txt in your repo.