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Add patent clause to license#114

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namurphy merged 9 commits into
PlasmaPy:masterfrom
namurphy:license-update
Oct 19, 2017
Merged

Add patent clause to license#114
namurphy merged 9 commits into
PlasmaPy:masterfrom
namurphy:license-update

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@namurphy

@namurphy namurphy commented Sep 19, 2017

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The Open Source Initiative (OSI) recently approved a new license that consists of the BSD 2-clause license with an added patent clause. The purpose of the patent clause is to give users the right to continue to use a package even if a contributor patents their contribution. This new license resolves an issue that has been raised about the BSD license (and many others) that it does not explicitly protect against software patents.

This commit adds the patent clause to our BSD 3-clause license to ensure that future users have the right to continue to use the package even if part of it gets patented.

Subject to the terms and conditions of this license, each copyright holder and contributor hereby grants to those receiving rights under this license a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except for failure to satisfy the conditions of this license) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer this software, where such license applies only to those patent claims, already acquired or hereafter acquired, licensable by such copyright holder or contributor that are necessarily infringed by:

(a) their Contribution(s) (the licensed copyrights of copyright holders and non-copyrightable additions of contributors, in source or binary form) alone;

or

(b) combination of their Contribution(s) with the work of authorship to which such Contribution(s) was added by such copyright holder or contributor, if, at the time the Contribution is added, such addition causes such combination to be necessarily infringed. The patent license shall not apply to any other combinations which include the Contribution.

Except as expressly stated above, no rights or licenses from any copyright holder or contributor is granted under this license, whether expressly, by implication, estoppel or otherwise.

This pull request also removes "All rights reserved" in the copyright notice because this clause no longer has any legal significance. I also modified headings and improved markdown formatting.

This license and patent clause will take effect for all future contributions to and versions of PlasmaPy after it is accepted. Earlier versions of PlasmaPy can continue to be distributed under the previous license. I consent to granting this patent clause for my prior contributions.

Please comment below if you approve of this license change.

Thank you!
-Nick

@namurphy
Remove "All rights reserved" from license copyright notice
cd28c02 
This change is being made because "All rights reserved" no longer has
any legal significance.  From Wikipedia:

  "All rights reserved" is a copyright formality indicating that the
  copyright holder reserves, or holds for its own use, all the rights
  provided by copyright law. Originating in the Buenos Aires
  Convention of 1910, it no longer has any legal effect in any
  jurisdiction[citation needed]. However, it is still used by many
  copyright holders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=All_rights_reserved&oldid=799152223
@namurphy
Add patent clause to license
afb1eae 
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) recently approved a new license that
consists of the BSD 2-clause license with an added patent clause.  The
purpose of the patent clause is to give users of PlasmaPy the right to
continue to use the software even if a contributor patents their
contribution.  This commit adds the patent clause to our BSD 3-clause
license to ensure that future users have the right to continue to use
the package even if part of it gets patented.

This license takes effect for all future contributions to and versions
of PlasmaPy.  Earlier versions of PlasmaPy can continue to be
distributed under the previous license.  I consent to granting this
patent clause for my prior contributions.

BSD-2-Clause-Patent license: https://opensource.org/licenses/BSDplusPatent
@namurphy
Update Markdown formatting/headings in LICENSE.md
9b410a1
@namurphy
Clarify that copyrights are to PlasmaPy developers
653c034 
This modification clarifies that the copyrights for the contributions
to this package belong to PlasmaPy developers.  Previously, this
stated "PlasmaPy Community" which unfortunately is probably too vague.
@namurphy namurphy added Availability docs PlasmaPy Docs at http://docs.plasmapy.org status: needs discussion Issues & PRs that need to be discussed at a community meeting or by the Coordinating Committee labels Sep 19, 2017
@namurphy namurphy mentioned this pull request Sep 28, 2017
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@namurphy

namurphy commented Sep 29, 2017

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I wrote an email to my group about FLOSS licenses that I thought I'd share here since it pertains to our discussion and might turn out to be useful.

Hi everyone,

I'd like to share what I've been learning recently about open source licensing. If you create works that you'd like to share openly, then it is important to adopt a license that explicitly gives permission to use, redistribute, and/or modify the work. If you do not explicitly grant permission to use your work, then by default your work is under an exclusive copyright which means that you are not giving people legal permission to use the work.

If you create software that you would like others to be able to use, redistribute, and modify; then I highly recommend putting an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license on it.

Open source licenses generally fall into two categories: permissive and copyleft. Permissive licenses have very few restrictions and allow source code and derived works to be incorporated into proprietary software. Copyleft licenses require source code and derived works to continue to be shared openly under the same license, which makes them incompatible with permissive licenses. Permissively licensed software may be incorporated into copyleft software, but copyleft software is incompatible with being incorporated directly into a permissively licensed software project.

  • The most permissive option is the MIT license, which is highly appropriate for academic projects with a small number of developers.
  • If you want a permissive license but there is any chance that a contributor could patent one of their contributions, then my favorite is the BSD+Patent license. When using this license, contributors agree to give users the right to use their contribution even if later on they decide to patent it.
  • If you want to ensure that modified versions of your code continue to be shared, then the copyleft GNU General Public License v3.0 is generally the best choice.

There are numerous Creative Commons licenses available for creative works that are not software.

  • The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows people to share and adapt works as long as attribution is given.
  • The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license additionally requires that modified works continue to be shared under the same license.

If your work is going into the public domain (e.g., content created while acting as a U.S. federal employee), then it helps to put a public domain mark on it.

Some of the much less useful things that I've learned are:

Please feel free to ask me about choosing licenses for your work, especially since this is a decision best made at the beginning of a project.

Have a good weekend!

Nick

This email is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

@namurphy namurphy mentioned this pull request Sep 29, 2017
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yopology requested a review from SolarDrew September 30, 2017 04:20
@namurphy

namurphy commented Oct 3, 2017

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Another alternative would be to create a PATENT.md file with this patent grant in our top-level directory. This would allow us to avoid changing the license file in any substantial way.

@namurphy
Copy old license to licenses/ and add a notice
626ba80 
The old license covers contributions prior to when the new license was
adopted. The notice quotes the patent grant and provides a list that
contributors may add their names to in order to agree to have the
patent grant cover their prior contributions.
@namurphy

namurphy commented Oct 11, 2017

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Dear PlasmaPy contributors,

Do you agree to the proposed license change to add the following language to our license, and have it cover your contributions to PlasmaPy? This clause gives users the right to use our contributions as part of PlasmaPy even if we later patent them. It would be really helpful if all of us respond so that this clause can cover all of our contributions up until now. My sincere thanks! -Nick

Subject to the terms and conditions of this license, each copyright holder and contributor hereby grants to those receiving rights under this license a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except for failure to satisfy the conditions of this license) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer this software, where such license applies only to those patent claims, already acquired or hereafter acquired, licensable by such copyright holder or contributor that are necessarily infringed by:

(a) their Contribution(s) (the licensed copyrights of copyright holders and non-copyrightable additions of contributors, in source or binary form) alone;

or

(b) combination of their Contribution(s) with the work of authorship to which such Contribution(s) was added by such copyright holder or contributor, if, at the time the Contribution is added, such addition causes such combination to be necessarily infringed. The patent license shall not apply to any other combinations which include the Contribution.

Except as expressly stated above, no rights or licenses from any copyright holder or contributor is granted under this license, whether expressly, by implication, estoppel or otherwise.

@PlasmaPy/plasmapy-community, @SolarDrew, @StanczakDominik, @thomasjpfan, @colbych, @RoberTnf, @pohzipohzi, @kuszaj, @ludovicogithub, @antoinelpp, @NabilHumphrey, @nrb1324, @yopology, @leahein, @cclauss, @ministrike3, @GrahamGoudeau

@namurphy

namurphy commented Oct 11, 2017

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I agree to the proposed license change.

@antoinetavant

antoinetavant commented Oct 11, 2017 via email

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@colbych

colbych commented Oct 11, 2017 via email

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@RoberTnf

RoberTnf commented Oct 11, 2017

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I agree

3 similar comments
@pohzipohzi

pohzipohzi commented Oct 11, 2017

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I agree

@leahein

leahein commented Oct 11, 2017

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I agree

@kuszaj

kuszaj commented Oct 11, 2017

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I agree

@tulasinandan

tulasinandan commented Oct 11, 2017 via email

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@yopology

yopology commented Oct 11, 2017 via email

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@cclauss

cclauss commented Oct 11, 2017 via email •
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@StanczakDominik

StanczakDominik commented Oct 12, 2017 via email

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@namurphy

namurphy commented Oct 17, 2017

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We are still awaiting responses from @SolarDrew, @thomasjpfan, @ludovicogithub, @NabilHumphrey, @nrb1324, @ministrike3, and @GrahamGoudeau. Do you agree to the proposed license change to add the following language to our license to protect against software patents, and have it cover your contributions to PlasmaPy? My sincere thanks to all of you! -Nick

Subject to the terms and conditions of this license, each copyright holder and contributor hereby grants to those receiving rights under this license a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except for failure to satisfy the conditions of this license) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer this software, where such license applies only to those patent claims, already acquired or hereafter acquired, licensable by such copyright holder or contributor that are necessarily infringed by:

(a) their Contribution(s) (the licensed copyrights of copyright holders and non-copyrightable additions of contributors, in source or binary form) alone;

or

(b) combination of their Contribution(s) with the work of authorship to which such Contribution(s) was added by such copyright holder or contributor, if, at the time the Contribution is added, such addition causes such combination to be necessarily infringed. The patent license shall not apply to any other combinations which include the Contribution.

Except as expressly stated above, no rights or licenses from any copyright holder or contributor is granted under this license, whether expressly, by implication, estoppel or otherwise.

@thomasjpfan

thomasjpfan commented Oct 17, 2017

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Agree.

@SolarDrew

SolarDrew commented Oct 17, 2017

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I'm happy to agree to this.

@NabilHumphrey

NabilHumphrey commented Oct 18, 2017

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I agree!

@namurphy
Update notice for old license
d8c6add 
The contributors who made pull requests PlasmaPy#63, PlasmaPy#77, PlasmaPy#107, and PlasmaPy#108
have not yet agreed to have the new patent clause apply to their
contributions.  The patent grant in the new license will not cover the
contributions from these pull requests.
@namurphy
Update header links in old license file
4e9e047
@namurphy
Update license description in README.md
b1699b1
@namurphy namurphy changed the title Proposal: add patent clause to license Add patent clause to license Oct 19, 2017
@namurphy

namurphy commented Oct 19, 2017

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I merge this momentarily. So far we have gotten the agreement from everyone except the people who contributed pull requests #63, #77, #107, and #108. I therefore kept the old license in licenses/ and added a note saying that those particular contributions are covered solely by the old license. Thank you again so much!

-Nick

@namurphy
namurphy merged commit ae049e3 into PlasmaPy:master Oct 19, 2017
@namurphy
namurphy deleted the license-update branch February 21, 2018 14:25
@namurphy namurphy removed the status: needs discussion Issues & PRs that need to be discussed at a community meeting or by the Coordinating Committee label Jul 23, 2018
@namurphy namurphy mentioned this pull request Aug 22, 2022
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