forum.solidproject.org Terms and Licensing

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

The forum.solidproject.org terms and licensing are being discussed from time to time in solid/chat. This is an issue to collect the various perspectives so that we can bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

@csarven 10.00 22 Feb 2019 on solid/chat:
@solid-pay I've discussed it in chat in the past several times. I don't feel like revisiting that in depth. So, I'll just say this and that'd be it from my end for now: 1) I am not a lawyer or a rights/license expert, so take this with a grain of salt 2) I don't think the NC, in a CC license, in particular, is a good idea for the forum because i) first and foremost, the ideas are being shared and advanced but... who (eventually there is a legal entity at the end of it) controls/owns the forum.. it is not "for everyone" as it stands, ii) one of the goals of Solid is to enable a different ecosystem/market/economy/an evolution in how we exchange information that goes far beyond the technical challenges - so, contrary eg. why would the ideas be shared in the open but then constrained from being re-used, and in this case, for commercial reasons?
IMO, CC BY (to the authors of the content) , CC0, or maybe even CC BY-SA (for the copylefters among us) would be more suitable for the broader Solid ecosystem in the long term.

[eduardoinnorway]

Whatever I do as a voluntary it is "CC Whatever" license for any of my code, ideas, images etc.. I don't care if people use them commercially or credit me or not. I don't have time to go around CC others as others don't have time to CC me if they use any of my free contributions online, so CC0 is my choice.

[melvincarvalho]

I'm no expert on licenses at all. But this is I believe an excerpt from the reddit license which is favoured by most dweb projects.

You retain the rights to your copyrighted content or information that you submit to reddit ("user content") except as described below.

By submitting user content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.

You agree that you have the right to submit anything you post, and that your user content does not violate the copyright, trademark, trade secret or any other personal or proprietary right of any other party.

Seems like reasonable wording.

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

https://www.osadl.org/Open-Source-License-Checklists.oss-compliance-lists.0.html

This group has created a license compliance checklist and matrix of compatibility between licenses. You need to join the group (which seems pretty nominal to do) in order to get access for now because it's in beta mode. But they do plan to complete the work and open source it very soon.

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

@csarven @melvincarvalho @eduardoinnorway what are your proposed routes to resolve this?

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

Ok - seeing as this is open for a month now and I've been the one trying to collect the information from other conversations I think we can close this. If anyone else feels the need to pick this up, open an issue and propose a route forward.