[Vp-integration-subgroup] "Models are not consistently licensed"

[Jacob Barhak]

Thanks William,

A good debate is reasonable regarding licensing. So it is welcome.

I can write a lot about it and in fact I have been having this conversation
on several channels.

There are many forms of restrictions on what you can do. Even open source
licenses are despite their name are based on copyright law which is a form
of legal restriction. Both copyright and patents are forms of legal
restrictions. And if you want a comparison and a longer discussion, I
suggest you look at the table the presentation I made for COMBINE last year:

   -

   Jacob. Barhak, Open Source and Sustainability, COMBINE 2020 October 5-9.
   Video: *https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1actGnx6FwvoCcPrrF3qbnO0AmHt10WN6
   <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1actGnx6FwvoCcPrrF3qbnO0AmHt10WN6>*
   starting from minute 13:10. Presentation:
*https://jacob-barhak.github.io/COMBINE2020_OpenSource_upload_2020_10_04.odp
   <https://jacob-barhak.github.io/COMBINE2020_OpenSource_upload_2020_10_04.odp>*


Many people are unnecessarily worried about patents. I assume many times
without understanding the details. I repeat again my conflict of interest,
since I do hold patents. So I may be biased in your mind, yet please do
check out my arguments in the presentation.

Note that just like software licenses are not always compatible with each
other, patents are not always compatible with some licenses and with
intentions of all parties involved - this is many times the source for
misunderstanding. Many restrictions are orthogonal to each other and need
to be cleared before use.. In many cases, some work may need multiple
licenses and permissions so you can use it.  It depends on many factors,
including jurisdictions, time, etc.

Specifically for CC0 - CC0 is the most unrestricting license I am aware of
since it waives copyright and therefore highly compatible with many others
- this is why it was mentioned as a good solution and indeed it has been
widely adopted . Moreover, it resolves issues of abandoned software or with
software where multiple contributors cannot agree on. So it gives life to
code and provides incentives to improve progress.

If I am about to integrate a new model or a new work, I may be restricted
by many restrictions, and those are coming from potentially multiple
sources, especially if I am integrating multiple models. So eliminating
copyright and making things compatible helps a lot. It may not be
sufficient since there are still orthogonal restrictions, yet it's a good
start. This is why it was recommended and indeed more and more entities are
using CC0 to release work or to accumulate it in a repository.

You mentioned CC licenses family - yes, those are nice licenses, yet some
still hold restrictions and are not even compatible with each other. Here
is the compatibility chart within CC license family:
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Wiki/cc_license_compatibility

And yes, in some cases for some entities some licenses will not match their
intentions - it depends on the situation - yet if you have to bridge many
intentions, it's a good idea to remove as many restrictions as possible.

Hopefully you find these explanations sufficient for now.

              Jacob



On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 8:19 AM William Waites <wwaites at ieee.org> wrote:

> I am hesitant to get involved in this particular aspect of the paper and
> have long since timed out on software licensing discussions. However…
>
> The point that there are inconsistent licenses (or even absent licenses
> which is legally the most restricted since that defaults to “all rights
> reserved” essentially) and this can cause problems when assembling
> composite models is accurate and fair. This is a challenge that we need to
> address. We want to maximise the impact of the public funding of much of
> the kind of work that we do, which means that others need to be as free as
> possible to reuse our work.
>
> It is debatable whether CC0 is appropriate. It is meant to emulate the
> public domain in places that do not have a legal concept of public domain.
> It does not require attribution, which is the normal standard for academic
> work. The other CC licenses that require attribution are not designed for
> software. Insisting on using the public domain for software and then
> asserting the ability to control use using patents is a novel idea, but I
> don’t think it is a very good one. It is also not possible in many
> jurisdictions that do not allow software patents.
>
> Standards bodies also typically have patent policies which range from
> “disclose your patents” to “if you contribute patented stuff you must agree
> to never try to enforce it”. We can reasonably expect that if we produce
> patent-encumbered standards, nobody will use them. From a standards
> development point of view, this needs addressed as well.
>
> There is also a ton of well-developed literature on free and open source
> software licensing and compatibility among licenses.
>
> Best wishes,
> -w
>
>
>
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