Currently there is no default license for user generated content in PAWS. It is all public, but nothing is licensed unless the user specifies it in some manner. I propose we change it to have a default open source license and allow for the users to specify different licenses (or lack thereof) in their own spaces.
If we go forward with this we need to adequately present this to the user, the implementation details should be discussed in subtasks.
@Phaebz and I were wondering about this − agree this should be nice to have :-)
(I like how Quarry is explicitly CC-0 − probably a hard sell for that code though :)
Taking the @bd808 bump on this to help move it forward.
I think the first step is for us to choose a default license and for us to add it for new users in an opt-out basis. Could be as simple as adding a LICENSE file for new users at first that they can edit at will.
So my rough draft would be:
Maybe add steps with notifications for all existing users and then for the non compliant ones after step 4? We won't have emails for all PAWS users but most of them usually add it in the wikis. And of course we should announce this in several channels.
Thoughts?
The plan in T221548#5951699 sounds reasonable to me. From past conversations with folks who actually are lawyers, it would be nice if there was an affirmative opt-in step that new PAWS users had to take to select their default license. If that is not readily possible in the jupyterhub workflow, then maybe a .skel file with a name that screams "you need to choose a default license" to prompt them when they first see the file browser view?
we'd choose one license from open source licenses (as defined by the cloud-services-team)
https://opensource.org/licenses/ is the list specified by https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitech:Cloud_Services_Terms_of_use
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I see this has been stalled for a while but as a result of a request to open-license one of my notebooks, I realized that all the code I put on PAWS to be shared is not technically licensed for reuse and that made me sad. I had been imagining about some sort of simple utility that could be clicked to add a Markdown cell with one of a few pre-set licenses (or new notebooks starting with a default license cell that of course could be deleted / altered if desired) but I also like the broader solution proposed above. Just chiming in to say this would be a great add to an already amazing resource!
If this goes ahead (which I hope will happen!), I'd lean towards a restrictive license rather than a permissive one; sites like Stack Overflow use permissive ones as the code there is meant to be incorporated in larger projects, but PAWS notebooks are independent projects that should respect the author's rights.