[Legal] Code from Stack Overflow

[Harbs <ha...@gmail.com>]

I would like to include some code from Stack Overflow, but I’m not sure what the guidance is regarding that. My specific use case is some code here.[1]

I went poking around on SO, to discover what the licensing terms on code there and discovered that for code before March 1 2016 code was licensed under CC-BY-SA. after March 1, 2016 it’s licensed under MIT.[2]

My understanding is that CC-BY-SA is “strong copyleft” and not really compatible with Apache licensing. Is that right? Does that mean we can not use even small code snippets from SO from before March 2016?

For code from after March 2016, where should attribution be put? Should a link be included in the code? A mention of the author in NOTICE? Should we include a link back to the SO post?

Should this be asked on legal?

Harbs

[1]https://stackoverflow.com/a/2401861
[2]https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/272956/a-new-code-license-the-mit-this-time-with-attribution-required?cb=1

Re: [Legal] Code from Stack Overflow

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

> My understanding is that CC-BY-SA is “strong copyleft” and not really compatible with Apache licensing. Is that right?

Not quite. Unmodified images and the like can be included [1]. Source code can not be included [2]. There was a discussion about this on legal discuss a little while ago where this was changed. [4]

> Does that mean we can not use even small code snippets from SO from before March 2016?

In general that’s correct.

Alternative you could contact the author and ask them to license the code under another license.

> For code from after March 2016, where should attribution be put? Should a link be included in the code? A mention of the author in NOTICE? Should we include a link back to the SO post?

You must included the full MIT license somewhere (as per terms of the MIT license) and it’s ASF policy it to add the MIT license or preferably a pointer to the license in the LICENSE file [3], nothing would be added to NOTICE. Including a link to SO may be helpful but links change over time.

Thanks,
Justin

1. https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#cc-sa
2. https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-b
3. http://www.apache.org/dev/licensing-howto.html#permissive-deps
4. https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/46b628e47e2461834066835ff7d696b2a55e00cf81a98b4daed444f0@%3Clegal-discuss.apache.org%3E

Re: [Legal] Code from Stack Overflow

[Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com.INVALID>]

There have been past discussions about code from SO on legal-discuss.
IIRC, the answer is, don't use code from SO that is copyrightable.  My
understanding is that, for example, you want to know how to convert a Java
Array to ArrayList, if you find that answer on SO, that really isn't
copyrightable.  There is really only a few ways to do it and the answer
isn't a "creative work".

So, for your case, is it a "creative work"?  IMO, yes, given the variety
of approaches.

There is old browser detection in flex-sdk's
templates/swfobject/history/history.js.  Maybe you can extend it to work
for Chrome and Edge and other browsers.  There is also some feature
detection in SWFObject on GitHub that may help.

-Alex 

On 7/3/17, 8:42 AM, "Harbs" <ha...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I would like to include some code from Stack Overflow, but I’m not sure
>what the guidance is regarding that. My specific use case is some code
>here.[1]
>
>I went poking around on SO, to discover what the licensing terms on code
>there and discovered that for code before March 1 2016 code was licensed
>under CC-BY-SA. after March 1, 2016 it’s licensed under MIT.[2]
>
>My understanding is that CC-BY-SA is “strong copyleft” and not really
>compatible with Apache licensing. Is that right? Does that mean we can
>not use even small code snippets from SO from before March 2016?
>
>For code from after March 2016, where should attribution be put? Should a
>link be included in the code? A mention of the author in NOTICE? Should
>we include a link back to the SO post?
>
>Should this be asked on legal?
>
>Harbs
>
>[1]https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstacko
>verflow.com%2Fa%2F2401861&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cea0529dfe7f64ca1482808d4c22a19
>a0%7Cfa7b1b5a7b34438794aed2c178decee1%7C0%7C0%7C636346933467510439&sdata=r
>XYpiTkpQHnqqpOgrt5fCQ1ME2L%2FciP63VNfKLoddFU%3D&reserved=0
>[2]https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmeta.s
>tackexchange.com%2Fquestions%2F272956%2Fa-new-code-license-the-mit-this-ti
>me-with-attribution-required%3Fcb%3D1&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cea0529dfe7f64ca148
>2808d4c22a19a0%7Cfa7b1b5a7b34438794aed2c178decee1%7C0%7C0%7C63634693346751
>0439&sdata=5qmZjcYRe5fRCsLXYvN5hbwa%2BTM25c%2FS7eUFa896xUM%3D&reserved=0