ALv2 is not on just software

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>]

The TL;DR: The ALv2 can be applied to any kind of (literary) work, and it covers more than source code.

 - Dennis

THE FYI DECONSTRUCTION

I recall someone indicating that documentation is not covered by the ALv2 on a compilation including it because documents are not software.  I don't know where I saw that, but it might be in the lengthy thread about Groovy or the business about Creative Commons licenses.

I just put the ALv2 boilerplate notice on several text files in a GitHub project of mine, including:

 " Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 " you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 " You may obtain a copy of the License at
 "
 "     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Note that the license notice applies to the individual files in this case.  (This is not at an Apache Project, so this is the proper form of notice.)

What struck me is the disclaimer, which I also included out of habit, although the files I am creating are text documents, not software as such.  Note that the disclaimer is specific to software, although its presence is benign.  However, it does not limit the scope of the ALv2, it just limits the scope of the disclaimer:

  "  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  "  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
  "  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  "  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  "  limitations under the License.

I included it out of habit.  It is still valuable, because the "See the License ..." portion remains applicable and useful.

I note that the license definitions of "Source" and "Work" make the comprehensiveness of the license very clear. 

I am making this observation because there appear to be some who think that it is only source-code that matters with respect to licenses and their categories under ASF Principles for IP handling.

ABOUT CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES

The Creative Commons licenses can be applied to software of course, even though the CC folk demure about that, apparently because it is politic to do so.  

The bigger problem with CC licenses is that they do not cover patents (not much of an issue for documentation) and they are not entirely permissive.  

The permissive-limitation issue arises in the Creative Commons requirement for prominent disclosure of the location of freely-obtainable originals when (re-) distributions employ DRM technology or other technical means for preventing copies and redistribution by a recipient.  This applies even to CC-by, so it is essentially a stronger attribution requirement than what ALv2 imposes.

Oddly enough, my explicit CC-by attribution requirement includes providing a link to the definitive original that is being redistributed or for which a derivative is developed.  That is, my CC-by licensing includes there being a traceable provenance.  When I use ALv2, as I did today, I foreswear that requirement, although I do follow the practice in my attribution clauses and I recommend such a practice to others. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2015 16:24
To: legal-discuss@apache.org
Subject: RE: [Apache Creadur/RAT-206] Request to add support for Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike / what LICENSE snippet to scan for?

I am puzzled.  "Creative Commons Public License" and "CCPL" do not seem to be names of any Creative Commons licenses, and the reproduced notice (below in the original message) is insufficient for a recipient of the file to find the actual license that governs the work.

If this is thought to be CC-SA, it should be identified as such.

It appears that too much creativity is being applied.

 - Dennis

DIGGING DEEPER

In the text of Creative Commons licenses, the term Public License is used, after definition with respect to a particular one (just as there are typical definitions for "You" "Creative Commons" and so on in the context of an individual license statement).  The term Creative Commons Public Licenses (note the plural) is used to refer to the collection of Creative Commons licenses.  The singular is not the name of any of the licenses, however, and I have not found CCPL ever used.  

The pages for selecting a Creative Commons license to use provides a sample notice statement that is very simple.  It consists of the statement

  "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons <particular license name>."  The particular license name is usually a link with visible text being the name and the target being the license deed page.  This could be handled in plaintext, for example, simply by saying, for example,


   /*                This work is licensed under a 
    * Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, 
    *        <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/>
    */

Whether such pages can appear as part of a release source is a different question that has been answered already, as I recall.

Note that the above remedy does not say anything about the so-called CCPL license.  I have no idea what that is about.  If there are files with no notice at all, only the copyright holder (or their authorized agent) can say what license pertains, if any, and what notice is to be made.


-----Original Message-----
From: P. Ottlinger [mailto:pottlinger@apache.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2015 13:20
To: legal-discuss@apache.org
Cc: pascalschumacher@gmx.net
Subject: Re: [Apache Creadur/RAT-206] Request to add support for Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike / what LICENSE snippet to scan for?

Hi everyone,

thanks for your feedback so far - to me it seems that the original
question is not answered yet.

Can anyone help with that?

Am 11.06.2015 um 21:25 schrieb P. Ottlinger:
> What is a valid file header we need to scan for to properly mark it as
> CC-licensed during RAT runs?
> Is it
> '
> THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS
> CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE ("CCPL" OR "LICENSE"). THE WORK IS
> PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE
> WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE OR COPYRIGHT LAW IS
> PROHIBITED.
> 
> BY EXERCISING ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK PROVIDED HERE, YOU ACCEPT AND
> AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. THE LICENSOR GRANTS
> YOU THE RIGHTS CONTAINED HERE IN CONSIDERATION OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF
> SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS.
> '
> ?

* Is there a valid license header for CreativeCommons-licenses?
* How does it look like?

Thanks
Phil



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