Relicense freely

[kousu]

Right now there's no formal license attached to the text of the site/wiki, so it defaults to All Rights Reserved by all the individual contributors. We should fix this so we use an "open" license, as a lab that is so involved in open source, and also because this is the fastest way to #23.

@RignonNoel did some researches and decided that CC-BY-4.0 or CC-BY-NC-4. are the most common and simplest options right now.

We will need to get the consent of everyone who has contributed, like @alexfoias and @ahill187, to get their consent for the transition.

Originally posted by @kousu in #23 (comment)

[kousu]

The process will look something like:

• @RignonNoel: use git to get a list of everyone who has contributed to the git version of the wiki(s)

• @kousu: dig through the old pre-GitBook pre-GitHub DokuWiki (archived on duke) to make a list of contributors

• @jcohenadad(?): announce the proposed license transition to current lab members, explain it, and get their consent

• @jcohenadad/@kousu: contact everyone who has left the lab and get their consent
  If anyone is uncontactable or refuses to share, negotiate with them, or in the worst case, remove their content, if we can figure out what's theirs.

• @kousu: write a PR that adds a LICENSE file

  The PR should probably contain some sort of language like StackOverflow or Wikipedia

  You agree that text submitted to this repository is your own work or that you have the rights to submit it, and will be licensed under the terms of the CC BY NC 4.0 International license

  How do other projects handle automatic copyright declarations?

  • -> Update license to CC-BY-SA-4.0 #74
  • -> Update license to CC-BY-SA-4.0 intranet.neuro.polymtl.ca#69

[kousu]

btw this is what SO has to say:

• https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing
• https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service/public#licensing

Subscriber Content

You agree that any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations, and product feedback (collectively, “Content”) that you provide to the public Network (collectively, “Subscriber Content”), is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms (CC BY-SA 4.0), and you grant Stack Overflow the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content, even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by you

[comradekingu]

@kousu Individual creators still retain copyright to their work outside of that.
Make sure you also get rights to issues filed, discussions, mailing lists, etc. covered.
The rules for assigning copyright differ based on judisdiction.
CC BY-SA 4.0 allows re-licensing into A/GPLv3+.
4 major versions in no time at all, with nothing made possible because of it is what CC licensing amounts to.
A fully redundant set of licenses.
Do you mean 4.0 intl btw? (Another reason why the scheme is so complex.)

On the whole, CC licensing doesn't carry any meaningful distinctions, since it also includes a NC-license.
For some reason that happens to be the one employed in https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/neuropoly/#information
I would argue it is a lot better to license freely right away, before taking contributions from many translators and then having to negotiate terms with each and every one of them.
Similarly based on differences in jurisdiction, the CC0 license doesn't work for collaborative works.

[kousu]

@kousu Individual creators still retain copyright to their work outside of that. Make sure you also get rights to issues filed, discussions, mailing lists, etc. covered.

This issue is about our website content, a site hosted at https://neuro.polymtl.ca/, and relatedly a wiki at https://intranet.neuro.polymtl.ca/. We're not going to be asking people to assign copyrights on discussion posts.

Do you mean 4.0 intl btw? (Another reason why the scheme is so complex.)

Yes, of course. I linked the one we're considering, it says International right in the middle of the page:

The rules for assigning copyright differ based on judisdiction. CC BY-SA 4.0 allows re-licensing into A/GPLv3+. 4 major versions in no time at all, with nothing made possible because of it is what CC licensing amounts to. A fully redundant set of licenses.
[...]
On the whole, CC licensing doesn't carry any meaningful distinctions, since it also includes a NC-license. For some reason that happens to be the one employed in https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/neuropoly/#information I would argue it is a lot better to license freely right away, before taking contributions from many translators and then having to negotiate terms with each and every one of them. Similarly based on differences in jurisdiction, the CC0 license doesn't work for collaborative works.

The purpose of this thread is to make sure the pre-existing content in this repo becomes clearly licensed, and that future contributions get the same license.

So I'm not sure I understand why any of that is relevant to us. Are you saying we shouldn't use Creative Commons because the GPL is better? I don't really get it. We just need a libre license that everyone on our team will feel comfortable consenting to.

Sorry, can you clarify things for me? Are you part of the Weblate team? Are you suggesting we won't be allowed to use hosted.weblate.org with CC-BY-NC-4.0-Intl?

[comradekingu]

@kousu
If you don't have the issues, wiki, etc. then you are tied to a VCS platform for no good reason.
Asking people to license their code contributions, there is no reason not to also ask people to do so for "content".

I am saying don't use CC, because it is a mess.
"Non-commercial" is a restriction on use, and therefore it is not a libre license.
You won't be accepted for the libre hosting plan on Hosted Weblate, but you can have it hosted via https://weblate.org/hosting/
CC-BY-4.0 intl qualifies though.
I am not part of the Weblate team.

I see no reason not to add a SA (share alike) or opt for a similarly copylefted license, but that is just my thinking (non-contributor).

[kousu]

I dug out the old pre-GitBook pre-GitHub wiki from smb://duke.neuro.polymtl.ca/archives/dokuwiki-backup.tar.gz and found where it kept its metadata: everything in plain-text files, which makes this an easy unix job:

p115628@joplin:~/dokuwiki-backup/conf$ ls -l 
total 116
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   598 Sep  2  2015 acl.auth.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   448 Mar 12  2014 acl.auth.php.dist
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  2021 Mar 12  2014 acronyms.conf
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users 12339 Mar 12  2014 dokuwiki.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   353 Mar 12  2014 entities.conf
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  6613 Mar 12  2014 interwiki.conf
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  1208 Mar 12  2014 license.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  1361 Jul 21  2020 local.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  1328 Jul  9  2018 local.php.bak
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   462 Mar 12  2014 local.php.dist
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  2564 Mar 12  2014 mediameta.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  2170 Mar 12  2014 mime.conf
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   165 Mar 12  2014 mime.local.conf
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users 11391 Mar 12  2014 mysql.conf.php.example
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   410 Mar 12  2014 plugins.local.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   437 Mar 12  2014 plugins.local.php.bak
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   173 Mar 12  2014 plugins.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   428 Mar 12  2014 plugins.required.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   105 Mar 12  2014 scheme.conf
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   748 Mar 12  2014 smileys.conf
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  3278 May  7  2020 users.auth.php
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users   153 Mar 12  2014 users.auth.php.dist
-rw------- 1 p115628 domain users  1680 Mar 12  2014 wordblock.conf

The users are here:

users.auth.php

(I don't know why this says .php, it's not a PHP file)

p115628@joplin:~/dokuwiki-backup/conf$ head -n 20 users.auth.php
# users.auth.php
# <?php exit()?>
# Don't modify the lines above
#
# Userfile
#
# Format:
#
# login:passwordhash:Real Name:email:groups,comma,seperated


jcohen:$1$REDACTED:Julien Cohen-Adad:jcohen@polymtl.ca:admin,user
guest:$1$REDACTED:guest:julien.cohenadad@gmail.com:guest
gmangeat:$1$REDACTED:Gabriel MANGEAT:gabriel.mangeat@gmail.com:neuropoly
nrios:$1$REDACTED:Nibardo Lopez Rios:nibardo.lopez-rios@polymtl.ca:neuropoly
jcohenadad:$1$REDACTED:Julien Cohen-Adad:jcohen@polymtl.ca:admin
jennifer:$1$REDACTED:Jennifer Campbell:REDACTED:neuropoly
jcohen2:$1$REDACTED:julien test:julien.cohenadad@gmail.com:neuropoly
nstikov:$1$REDACTED:Nikola Stikov:stikov@gmail.com:admin
chgroc:$1$REDACTED:Charley Gros:REDACTED:neuropoly

Anyway, here's the users we need to contact (behind an authwall for PII protection), extracted by

p115628@joplin:~/dokuwiki-backup/conf$ awk -v FS=:  '/[#]/ {next} $1 ~ /[a-z]/ {print "* " $3 " <" $4 ">" }' users.auth.php 

however, while looking around here, I also noticed:

p115628@joplin:~/dokuwiki-backup/conf$ grep license local.php 
$conf['license'] = 'cc-by-sa';

which seems to mean CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported:

p115628@joplin:~/dokuwiki-backup/conf$ head -n 24 license.php 
<?php
/**
 * This file defines multiple available licenses you can license your
 * wiki contents under. Do not change this file, but create a
 * license.local.php instead.
 */

$license['cc-zero'] = array(
    'name' => 'CC0 1.0 Universal',
    'url'  => 'http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/',
);
$license['publicdomain'] = array(
    'name' => 'Public Domain',
    'url'  => 'http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/',
);
$license['cc-by'] = array(
    'name' => 'CC Attribution 3.0 Unported',
    'url'  => 'http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/',
);
$license['cc-by-sa'] = array(
    'name' => 'CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported',
    'url'  => 'http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/',
);
$license['gnufdl'] = array(

Even if it was kind of a cheap click-through EULA, it means everyone who contributed to that version of the site was, in theory, consenting to do so under CC-BY-SA-3.0, which means we can use CC-BY-SA-4.0-Intl without contacting them (though many of them are still with us) because the legalese says

You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of: (i) this License; (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 US)); (iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License.

@RignonNoel, can you please change the tentative license on Weblate to CC-BY-SA-4.0?

[kousu]

For the newer content, those contributors are:

• https://github.com/neuropoly/neuro.polymtl.ca/graphs/contributors
• https://github.com/neuropoly/intranet.neuro.polymtl.ca/graphs/contributors

I think, because the license was lost in the GitBook port, there's about 32 people we need to contact to get clarity. I'll start a PR.