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Re: Assigning CC-BY-4.0 licence to CIF dictionaries

I confirm that CC-BY-4.0 would fit in with the projected workflow thatthe Chester office has in place for assigning DOIs to future releasesof the dictionaries.
Two corollaries:
(1) Should we then have a _dictionary.licence term in the DDLm dictionary?    That would advertise the licence explicitly upon opening the dictionary.    Perhaps one also needs a _dictionary.licence_url to allow the full    content of the licence to be retrieved?(2) If so, we can enforce a single enumeration value (CC-BY-4.0) or we can    allow additional values (if the community needs that for the exemptions    that might be required e.g. by funding bodies as James mentions).
Brian

On 03/04/2024 05:09, James H via comcifs wrote:> Dear COMCIFS,> > It may come as some surprise that no licence is attached to our> dictionaries. As these are machine-readable, they are available for> other automated ontology-management systems (e.g. EMMO) to ingest and> transform, however, the lack of a licence opens them up to perceived> legal jeopardy. From time to time in the past licensing has been raised> but not followed through on, the latest as far as I can tell being 2011.> An educational thread from 1999 can be read> https://www.iucr.org/__data/iucr/lists/comcifs-l/msg00032.html> <https://www.iucr.org/__data/iucr/lists/comcifs-l/msg00032.html> and the> statement of IUCr policy originating at that time is at> https://www.iucr.org/resources/cif/comcifs/policy> <https://www.iucr.org/resources/cif/comcifs/policy>> > Since that time, Creative Commons have produced licences for material> that is intended to be shared. These licenses are designed to work> across international legal systems. The two which seem most appropriate> to us are CC0 (public domain), which is essentially renouncing all> rights conferred by copyright, and CC-BY, which does the same, but> requires attribution and that any changes to the original are clearly> indicated. I urge you to have a look at> https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/> <https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/> for background on> creative commons.> > Having pondered the above, I would like now to propose that our> dictionaries are licensed as CC-BY, for the following reasons, based on> the decision points in the Creative Commons "chooser" tool:> > 1. We need to pick a licence for clarity (see above)> 2. CC0 (public domain) would theoretically allow somebody to take our> dictionaries and claim them as their own or to distribute subtly but> incorrectly modified versions. Note that the wwPDB does license their> data as CC0, so this concern on my part may be misguided, particularly> in a scientific community where the IUCr is an authoritative source> 3. We do not wish to restrict use of our dictionaries for commercial> purposes, for example, if a diffractometer manufacturer wished to bundle> a dictionary and add their own data names to it, they should not need to> spend their time or our time gaining permission. Simply following the> rules for attribution and flagging modifications should be enough.> 4. Transformation and adaptation of our dictionaries is an increasingly> common approach as neighbouring disciplines realise that they can save a> lot of time (e.g. the ongoing EMMO work). Allowing this type of> modification is just normal scientific practice, where one group builds> on the openly available results of other groups, so we should not> restrict it> 5. We could require that any modified versions are published under the> same licence, which would then make it CC-BY-ShareAlike. My opinion is> that this type of restriction just introduces friction, for example,> some funding body may require all outputs to be licensed according to> some quite liberal licence that is not clearly compatible with> CC-BY-ShareAlike, and so there's a need to seek an exemption.> > Please discuss. Those with insight into the wwPDB's choice of CC0 are> welcome to weigh in. If there are no outstanding objections by the end> of the month I will take that as agreement.> > best wishes,> James._______________________________________________comcifs mailing listcomcifs@iucr.orghttp://mailman.iucr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/comcifs

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