Public Invention Free-Culture License Guidelines (v0.1) for the [Project Name] project
Note on Usage
These guidelines were written by Public Invention. These guidelines are licensed under CC0, to encourage reuse by other free-libre projects. In the text below, you may wish to replace the pattern [this organization] and [This organization] with the name of your organization.
Purpose
[This organization] seeks to build a free-culture public commons of works, including poosibly hardware devices and inventions. Our repositories contain a wide variety of matter to usefully convey these inventions to the public. This policy is our attempt to follow the principles of free-libre open source software applied to inventions in general, and hardware inventions in particular.
In spirit, we give you the right to copy, use, publish, distribute these materials. If you make useful modifications and amendments to these materials, we ask you to contribute your improvements back to us and to the world under the same condition: that anyone who improves your work is also obligated to publish those improvements to all if they convey them to any. This principle is sometimes called “copyleft” and first expressed in the GNU General Public License applied to software.
In cases where copyright law does not apply, we ask that you follow normal academic ethics and etiquette by giving the authors academic credit by name for text, data compilations, theorems, etc. Do not plagiarize.
Licenses for Different Kinds of Matter
| Material | License |
|---|---|
| Software | GNU Affero GPL v3 |
| Web-delivered Software | GNU Affero GPL v3 |
| Hardware | CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 - Strongly Reciprocal |
| Documentation | CC0 (public domain) |
| Scientific Articles | Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License |
| Freehand Graphic Art | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-SA) |
| Diagramatic Graphic Art | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-SA) |
| Regulated Medical Devices | CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 - Strongly Reciprocal or Public Invention Sunlight Regulatory Agreement (WIP) |
Notes and Rationale
By making documentation CC0 (public domain), we hope to encourage maximum reuse and translation into other languages.
If a document looks like a Scientific Article (for example is written in LaTeX), please assume it is one, and should be treated as no-derivatives work to maintain scientific integrity. If it looks and reads like a publishable peer-reviewed scientific paper or the draft beginning of a publishable peer-reviewed paper, we intend for it to be covered by Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. We use the No Derivatives license for scientific works only in order to maintain scientific integrity. This is the normal anbd traditional behavior among scientists.
If art was drawn by hand, the attribution to the artist should remain with the work Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-SA).
The best practice for diagrams is to include a copyright notice and license in small print in the diagram. For high-quality works we retain attribution to promote [this organization]; for low-effort diagrams we may use CC0 (public domain).
Overrides
A specific repo may specify a different policy. Individual files or works may override this general policy. If a file does not have a license, please assume either the repo license or this general policy. A file which does not clearly have a license is likely an oversight on our part, and we invite you to bring it to our attention.
Assignment of Copyright
[If/Since] [this organization] is a legal entity, volunteers are expected to assign the copyright of work done on [this project] to [this organization] so that in a copyright dispute there is a single copyright holder ([this organization]) to simplify things. [This organization] will continue to attribute the work to original author where feasible.
License for these Guidelines
These guidelines are licensed under CC0, to encourage reuse by other free-libre projects.