adding a license

[gedankenstuecke]

I just noticed that our repo here doesn't have a license attached to it. I think the website contents already had some CC license applied to it? But we should also license the small parts of code we have here.

I'd suggest doing a dual license:

1. Restating the existing CC license for the website contents
2. For the tiny bits of code modifications that the repo contains, we should probably go with the same license the BeautifulHugo template that we use has?

[peterjc]

The MediaWiki site was explicitly CC-BY 4.0 licensed and we have that in the converted repository https://github.com/obf/wiki

To my knowledge the WordPress site content never had an explicit license, and so defaults to all rights reserved by the assorted contributors. I may be wrong here (I hope so).

Assuming that, it would be pragmatic to consider adopting CC-BY or similar (there’s a debate worth having there in the age of text mining) for future blog posts and perhaps pages. We can also trace authorship of past blog posts to relicense those (typically single authors and credited in the metadata or text on guest posts). However, unless we have the page history in the Wordpress export, accurately automatically determining authorship of past pages is likely nigh impossible 😢

+1 in making the licensing of the Hugo theme modifications more explicit as needed.

[gedankenstuecke]

Ah, that's a shame for the website. I had a look and also couldn't find any explicit license anywhere for the website contents itself. I guess for the non-blog post content we could reasonably assign a CC license as they'll likely be written by extant board members, but for the blog posts that's indeed a different matter. :/

[nlharris]

So what did we decide to do about this?

[peterjc]

Clarify theme license changes are inherited from the original.

Add CC-BY to the end of the blog post template (encouraged but optional)?

Add general "Content copyright OBF and/or named authors, all rights reserved unless explicitly stated otherwise on a page." footer?

[gedankenstuecke]

Putting the website code/themes under the same license as beautifulhugo sounds easy enough to do.

For the content: One thing we could do is start licensing everything that's being released from now on under some CC license and keep the previous content under all rights reserved. Our git logs would effectively be enough to check for that I guess?

[hlapp]

I'm concerned stating all rights reserved unless explicitly stated otherwise on a page risks sowing more confusion than necessary, because it seems to set a default that's inherently the opposite of open (which specifically does not reserve all rights, i.e., grants crucial rights). So rather than some nebulous and non-open "all rights reserved" default, why not refer to CC-BY as the default.

[peterjc]

@hlapp CC-BY would be a reasonable default for new blog posts (I'm suggesting this), and perhaps new pages (less compelling in my mind), but we can't unilaterally do than to all the historic content (such as guest blog posts) without owning the copyright.

[gedankenstuecke]

The issue with changing the license of existing things is why I'd suggest doing 'dual licensing', keeping historic content basically under 'all rights reserved' and all future content under CC BY.

All blog posts published after June 10, 2025 is made available under CC BY. Blog posts released prior to that date are "all rights reserved" except where stated otherwise.

Or something along those lines

[hlapp]

Isn't the issue with historic content limited to blog posts by non-OBF authors?

[gedankenstuecke]

I guess it's also linked to posts made by people who aren't on the OBF board any longer? for us we can quickly agree, but our firsts posts from 2002, so it'll be hard to reach out to all of those people and ask for consent to re-license I fear

[hlapp]

I don't think the number is large. This undertaking succeeded even for a much larger group of IP owners for was it Bioperl or Biopython that aimed to change its license (to dual-license). I would argue it's quite far from infeasible.

[gedankenstuecke]

I just gave it a go to see how feasible it would be:

For our pages itself:

cat page/*.md |grep "author:"| sort | uniq -c
      1 author:
      2 author: herve.menager
      3 author: heuermh
      1 author: hmenager
      1 author: hzahroh
      1 author: iddo
      1 author: jeremy.just
      1 author: jess
      4 author: khokamp
     19 author: kushinauwu
     30 author: nlharris
      2 author: sarthaksehgal
      2 author: The OBF
      1 author: yo

and for the blog posts:

cat posts/*.md |grep "author:"| sort | uniq -c
      1 author: aaron
     20 author: admin
      1 author: aimundo
      1 author: akeshavan
      1 author: allenday
      3 author: andreas
      1 author: AngelaMuraya
      1 author: armando_djiyou
      1 author: arunav
      1 author: azizk
      2 author: bala
      2 author: Bastian Greshake Tzovaras
      1 author: beatricemiha
      3 author: bgreshake
     11 author: brad
      1 author: calkibet
      2 author: chebizarro
     23 author: cjfields
     48 author: dag
      1 author: danielasenraoka
      5 author: davidw
      1 author: dimitras
      1 author: edidiongmichael08
      1 author: elfpie
      5 author: etal
      4 author: farahzk
      1 author: fnyasimi
      1 author: furkanmtorun
      1 author: gemmaturon
      1 author: gigikenneth7
      8 author: heikki
     19 author: hilmar
      1 author: hlwiencko
      6 author: hzahroh
      1 author: hzahroy
      2 author: iddo
      1 author: jackiemaingi
      1 author: jacobgisa
      1 author: jemima.becker
      1 author: jeremy.just
      1 author: JoaoRodrigues
      1 author: johnm
      1 author: josemduarte
      1 author: just
      3 author: kblin
      3 author: kcranstn
      8 author: kdahlquist
      1 author: keerthanaP
      1 author: Kyra-Feuer
      1 author: lacion
      1 author: lichuin.chong
      1 author: lindsayrutter
      1 author: luise.rauer
     13 author: malvikasharan
      6 author: mauricio
      1 author: mblack
      6 author: mdehoon
      1 author: mdksarker
      1 author: msalcan
      1 author: mthompson
      9 author: NaohisaGoto
     68 author: nlharris
      1 author: nongeso
      3 author: osborne
      1 author: pengfeifan
     86 author: peterc
      1 author: pjotrp
      3 author: rbuels
      1 author: rgarcia
      1 author: rinamdmansor
      1 author: RKrichilsky
      1 author: rnanjala
      1 author: rupeshgelal
      1 author: saketkc
      2 author: sarthaksehgal
      1 author: selgebali
      1 author: sonacharles
     51 author: stajich
      1 author: tanakamol
      1 author: tendai
      1 author: tfennell
      3 author: tiago
      1 author: twesigomwedavid
      1 author: urszula
      1 author: vdauwera
      1 author: wgatua
     12 author: yo
      1 author: yourusername
      1 author: ywalburga
      1 author: zkoksal

There's certainly a long tail for the blog posts, but it seems quite doable for the pages and the majority of blog posts indeed!

[gedankenstuecke]

@hlapp We discussed this at today's board hangout, and @HLWiencko volunteered to send out the emails to all contributors to inform them about our re-licensing plans. The easiest way to do this would be to export all emails of the accounts on our old Wordpress blog. Would you be able to make such a list? 🙂

[hlapp]

@gedankenstuecke I have the list. We can determine on Slack how best to convey it.