===================================================
Licencing policy for KM3NeT open science components
===================================================
Why care about licenses?
========================
Publishing FAIR data
--------------------
Publishing data and source code to ensure reproducibility of scientific
results is not only a matter of professional courtesy and an adherence
to the call to return value to civil society for publicly funded
endeavors, but also a necessity to ensure scientific diligence.
The FAIR principles governing open data publication list the licensing
of published resources like data, software and supplementary material as
one of the key principles (see
`go-fair.org `__).
This ensures legal security for the user of the resources, and is
therefore considered an essential part of the "reusablility"-requirement
of FAIR data [1]_. These licenses should be machine-readable and be
distributed with the products to allow easy use.
Open Science initiatives
------------------------
Open Science including open access publications, open software and open
data increasingly becomes a key elements in funding schemes. Developing
the underlying policy schemes is therefore a development necessity.
Beyond politics, open science (and the according licensing) can also
promote or demote the involvement of external scientists, developers and
civil society in the development and education. Therefore, using widely
recognized licensing schemes also reduces barriers of insecurity in the
reuse of publications.
Genesis of this document
------------------------
The considerations here also draw on discussions with members of
`CTA `__ and
`ASTRON `__, and relate to documents provided
and discussions and held within the `ESCAPE
project `__ and the
`IVOA `__. General guidelines are listed in the
bibliography.
Core concepts
=============
Legal concepts can vary due to the different legal and societal
traditions in the various countries, although international copyright
issues are successively standardized through international contracts and
organizations [2]_. Note, however, that the following definitions follow
an EU-based conceptualization and heavily draw on [3]_ as an exemplary
point of view.
Legal background
----------------
Creator and Copyright
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copyright includes the exclusive rights of creators of a creative work
which can be reproduced and is intended to protect creators of creative
work against exploitation. It is extended to the protection of
reproduction of the creative work also for marketeers to ensure
commercialization of creative works. These creative works include works
of literature, art and science. Copyright protection is generally
invoked by the **creative act** independent of investment in or quality
or size of the creation.
The **owner of copyright** is generally the creator, for collaborative
work all authors jointly. Only exception is the copyright of
contractually developed software, which belongs to the employee (see `EU
Directive
91/250/EEC `__).
Copyright in the strict sense cannot be transferred, only **ancillary
copyright** (for redistribution, processing and marketing) can be
transferred. Here, rights for use and redistribution can be
contractually transferred or granted, including total buy out of
copyright or through regulations in an employment contract, and through
licenses. These permissions can also be granted orally or assumed by
custom.
In addition to copyright, a creator also holds the author’s **personal
rights** (sometimes referred to as "moral rights"), which reach beyond
copyright and include the moral interests in the work. They include the
right to first publication, right to change the original work or right
to attribution. These rights can only to a limited extent be yielded by
a contract.
Public domain
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Explicitly not protected by copyright and therefore **free by
principle** are ideas, information, data or other abstract resources, as
they form the foundation on which the creative work is based. Thus, the
content of a creative work is generally not protected, the form,
however, is. As example, a concrete piece of software code is protected,
while the programming language and programming concepts are not
protected. Also, scientific findings are not protected by copyright,
i.e. general relativity as concept is not protected, the formulation of
the concept in a specific publication however is protected. Thus,
scientific data per se is in the public domain, again independent of the
efforts invested in their creation. After the end of a nationally
varying protective phase (e.g. 50 to 70 years), copyright protected
works also enter into the public domain.
Data and Databases
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While data and facts are not protected by copyright, **derivatives of
data** like enriched data sets (with texts, graphics etc.) and databases
can carry copyright. Databases are by EU-standards allocated copyright
in order to protect investments in the generation of databases (see `EU
Directive
96/9/EC `__), called
sui-generis right. Database contents enter into the public domain 15
years after creation/publication.
Note that usage of data or data collections can be (and in the digital
market often is) sold, however, this is no matter of licensing or
copyright as the vendor does generally not hold any copyright on the
data. Third parties are therefore free to use the data (considering
general legal boundaries). `Discussion Issue
#1 `__
For licensing of data, various aspects of data and databases are covered
by copyright and might therefore each carry a separate license. Separate
licenses can be applied to waive firstly the rights granted through
database protection, secondly, copyright on database assemly and the
arrangement and presentation of data, and thirdly on the data itself if
it is sufficiently processed to count as creative act, which can be
assumed for the relevant triggered data produced within KM3NeT.
Personal rights
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Personal rights can conflict with copyright as soon as the use of
person-specific publication of information is concerned, as they are
specifically protected by rights like the right to privacy. Specific
personal rights also include the right to informational
self-determination. On European level, the GDPR (`EU Regulation
2016/679 `__)
regulates data protection. Generally the use of personal data requires
permission by the person concerned. Therefore, the use of names of
authors as well as publication of audio-visual material in which persons
can be identified generally requires permission, which needs to be based
on free choice, be specific to the use and well informed. This
permission can be withdrawn at any time. `Discussion Issue
#6 `__
Open Science / Open Software Licensing
--------------------------------------
Licensing domains
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If no license is provided, a work is generally protected by copyright.
In order to lighten the restriction implied by the copyright on reuse
and modification, the “open” environment necessitates licensing in
various domains, which are customarily denoted as
- OER: Open Educational Resources for education material
- FOSS: Free and Open Source Software
- Open Content (cultural content) and Open Access (scientific content)
License types
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
License templates are provided by various organisations, the texts of
which are published as open content themselves, allowing free use of the
texts.
- Open Source Licenses for software: e.g. `Free Software
Foundation `__ (General Public License, GPL)
- Open Content Licenses: e.g. `Creative
Commons `__
- Open Data Licenses for databases: `Open Knowledge
Foundation `__ (e.g. ODbL).
- Public domain declarations: used to mark work in the public domain,
e.g. applicable to raw data (not a license in the strict sense).
Licenses should be used according to their respective domain and can
only be issued by the holder of the copyright. Note that although many
of the licenses by the above organisations are provided as
“international” licenses, they might in some terms contradict some
national laws, in which case the applicable national law takes priority.
Open licenses in general allow free dissemination, duplication and
reproduction of the product. For Open Content, commercial use can be
prohibited, while FOSS licensing generally allows commercialization.
Note that this means that “open” content does not necessarily have to be
“free”: If commercialization is allowed, it is e.g. possible to run open
software on a server and require payment for the use of the service.
User duties
~~~~~~~~~~~
Licenses can include duties for users to define conditions under which
the work can be used, namely
- **attribution**: author or copyright holder must be named
- **copyright notice**: the copyright notice must be reproduced
alongside the work
- **share-alike**: derivatives of the work must be published under the
same license (in software called “copyleft”)
- **change documentation**: changes to the work must be documented and
published accordingly.
Warranty
~~~~~~~~
The full exclusion of liability for the reuse of the published work (“no
warranty clause”) is not binding in all jurisdictions, and therefore
limited by the applicable law. However, liability for open source/open
content work is under practical circumstances considered minor.
Embargo periods and revoking of license
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Embargo periods before the publication of material do not affect the
license per se, as the copyright is independent of the actual access to
the work. Therefore, an open license does not imply a duty for the
copyright holder to allow free access to the work for the wider public.
Licenses can therefore already be applied to material that is still
unpublished without any implications for the publishing process.
Note, however, that a work published under an open license is
practically difficult to revoke, as redistribution of the work is
permitted without “validating” the current status of the license with
the copyright holder. Therefore, although some national jurisdictions
technically allow revoking of an open license, in practical terms
retracting the distribution of a work once it is “out there” is close to
unachievable. Therefore, moving from a stricter license to a more open
license in the course of time is easier than limiting permissions at a
later stage. `Discussion Issue
#2 `__. However, the
process of relicensing in software is a `tested
practice `__, which
however should be avoided.
Common practices
================
As guideline, practices in other science projects and collaborations and
recommendations by relevant standard-setting authorities are summarized
here.
Software
--------
For software, licensing can quickly become difficult as the spectrum
between fully copyright protected commercial software to "as free as
possible" open software is large and various versions of widely used
licenses exist.
Software types
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In software development, e.g. the `SKA software
guidelines `__
order software according to the development process, as this decides the
liberty to choose the software license.
- **Off-the-shelf software** is used "as-is", in which case the license
distributed with the software is outside the control of KM3NeT.
- **Derived software** is developed within KM3NeT but includes software
packages which come with a license. As these licenses might require
redistribution, the derived software carries a mixture of licenses.
- **“bespoke” software** is developed within KM3NeT without additional
dependencies. Here, the license is free for choice.
Standard licenses
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The choice of licenses varies in the community, including the `3 clause
BSD license `__ (SKA,
CTA), the `Apache 2.0
license `__ (Astron), `GNU
general public license `__ (Aladin,
CDS) and others. This shows that software licensing follows no specific
standards as long as they fall into the category of `Open Source
Licenses `__.
Relevant properties
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Core aspects of software licenses in the open domain are related to the
compatibility of various licenses, as combination of software packages
for common use in derived software is common, and the protection against
patent claims if the software is used (and patented) in a commercial
context.
For the first aspect, the compatibility of the software license
especially with the widely-used GNU license has to be considered (for a
compatibility matrix, see
`Wikipedia `__),
for resolving the patenting issue, which is most relevant for the US
market, some licenses carry a `patent claims protection
clause `__.
`Discussion Issue
#4 `__
In KM3NeT
~~~~~~~~~
Some software in KM3NeT already carry licenses according to the choice
of the programmers. They include the `MIT
license `__ (km3pipe, jpp) or GNU
general public license (gSeaGen). Others do not carry a license yet.
Data
----
Licensing of data is still in development within the community, as the
necessity for licensing was not recognized for quite some time (and
indeed does not exist for "basic" data sets, see above). For data sets
and derivatives, the GAVO-DaCHS software e.g. allows for Creative
Commons 0, with attribution or attribution/share-alike as `standard
values `__.
Reference developments within the Research Data Alliance also
`indicate `__
the possible use of Creative Commons.
In [4]_, Open Data Commons is introduced in addition to the Creative
Commons licensing scheme
(`ODC-By `__,
`ODC-ODbL `__). The licenses
provided here are more specific to data bases, and copyleft clauses more
flexible for the reuse and re-licensing. These specification might
therefore be advantageous for databases. However, the Open Data Commons
licenses only cover the sui generis database rights and arrangement of
the data. For the data offered in the database, a separate content
license by Open Data Commons, or a Creative Commons 4.0 license can be
applied, as the latter also specifically applies to data.
Texts, graphs and supplementary material
----------------------------------------
Creative Commons was designed for the use on text, graphics and also
audio-visual media. It is therefore well suited to be used in this
context and already finds wide application.
However, for scientific publications, restrictions on licensing might be
given by the publisher. The possibility to apply an open license is
therefore sometimes limited, although open access initiatives generally
move towards the implementation of open schemes.
Policy and recommendations
==========================
Legal situation
---------------
Note that this memo was not written by a lawyer! The summary in this
part reflects the authors’ current grasp of the situation. It will need
to be specified further by contributions from the partners and through
the development of the legal background of the KM3NeT collaboration.
Creators in the KM3NeT context
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note that probably a wide range of copyright regulations exist in the
various institutes in the KM3NeT collaboration with varying degrees of
vagueness. While the creation of scientific content by professors and
researchers might in some context be covered by the freedom of science
and copyright might lie with the author, employees in various fields
might automatically have to yield copyright at least of software, while
copyright on student contributions might depend on the degree of direct
instruction by the supervisor for creation in the context of the thesis.
`Discussion Issue
#5 `__
For employments at institutes, even if funded through third parties,
copyright is usually regulated in the employment contract. If in doubt,
usually the right of the creator is considered to be predominant, i.e.
the user has to prove that a license for use was granted.
MoU and EU funded projects
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the applicable Memorandum of Understanding for phase 1, Article 14
regulates intellectual property rights, which, shortly summarized,
leaves copyright of any product with the contributing institutions.
Within the INFRADEV project supporting KM3NeT phase 2.0, an obligation
is placed on the institutes to foster open access [5]_, and an
according "consortium agreement" needs to be reached. In both phases,
however, no explicit regulation exists that would allow to transfer
copyright to "the KM3NeT collaboration", as no specific clauses exist
within the inter-institutional contracts, and the collaboration, not
being a legal entity, is not able to hold a copyright anyway.
Policy principles
-----------------
Licensing in KM3NeT should, if not limited by other circumstances,
follow the following principles:
1) Permissive license
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copyright licenses to products produced within the KM3NeT collaboration
and for the KM3NeT collaboration should put minimal restrictions on the
use of the products and should therefore be permissive.
2) Attribution
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It should be ensured that the use of KM3NeT products is attributed to
the creators, i.e. to the copyright holder according to the best current
understanding of the legal situation and to the KM3NeT collaboration
where possible. Where attribution to the KM3NeT collaboration is not
possible, the association should be indicated by additional metadata
provided with the product according to standards set by the
collaboration.
3) No Share-Alike
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As share-alike clauses might lead to compatibility issues at a later
stage, they should be carefully considered and are not recommended at
this point. Following principle 1 to publish "as open as possible", no
reason for placing this as general restriction can be seen at this
point.
4) No Warranty
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Also, liability for the use of KM3NeT products should be limited as far
as the national jurisdiction allows. Licenses should therefore carry a
“no warranty” clause.
5) Standard application
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In addition to that, the license should be machine-readable to allow the
easy distribution of the licensing information alongside the product.
Standard licenses are provided within KM3NeT.
Licensing by product
--------------------
As there need not to be a "one-size-fits-all" approach to licensing,
licenses should be considered according to the actual use of the KM3NeT
product and the related circumstances.
Software licensing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For software, the most widely used MIT License represents a compact
license allowing reuse under the condition of forwarding the license to
all derived software, while waiving all warranty. Although not provided
by a central organization for various jurisdictions, its wide use makes
it customary law in practically all jurisdictions.
As the community use does not indicate any preferred version for open
software licenses, three different option are considered at this point,
Apache 2.0, BSD-3 and MIT. `Discussion Issue
#4 `__
**Recommendation**: `MIT
license `__, `3 clause BSD
license `__ or `Apache
2.0 `__ according to
decision by the Software Working Group
Documentation and supplementary material
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For supplementary material, the Creative Commons Attribution License is
widely used and comes in all necessary flavours, as it allows all
baseline rights as redistribution and modification, but under conditions
like author attribution. CC International licenses 4.0 act as
international licenses by incorporating clauses allowing for deviation
from the license according to national regulations.
**Recommendation**: `CC-BY 4.0 International
license `__ or higher
Note that one might consider other licensing for promotional material of
KM3NeT, see `Discussion Issue
#3 `__
.. _data-and-databases-1:
Data and databases
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Following the above principles and opting for a license that is specific
for the use on data, a license by the OpenDataCommons is recommended,
including attribution. `Discussion Issue
#1 `__, for data,
the use of CC-BY is recommended, as it is already offered as a default
option within the Virtual Observatory software and widely used for
datasets.
Recommendation for databases:
`ODC-By `__ Recommendation for
data: `CC-BY 4.0 International
license `__
Roadmap to Licensing in KM3NeT
------------------------------
Current status in the KM3NeT collaboration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Currently, various licenses have been applied to KM3NeT publications,
e.g. on Zenodo, software package, e.g. on Git, and supplementary
material on webpages and social media. In addition to that, also the
quote of the copyright holder varies widely, from individuals to
institutes or to "the KM3NeT collaboration".
Starting with licenses
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- The use of standard licenses and the citation of the copyright holder
should be agreed upon by the Institute Board of KM3NeT
- Short guidelines how to apply the chosen licenses will be made
available
- For future approved publications of research results, data and
software, authors should be encouraged to apply the licenses.
- Where relicensing is appropriate or no licenses has yet been
allocated to the research product, authors are encouraged to also
apply the licenses retroactively.
.. _attribution-1:
Attribution
~~~~~~~~~~~
According to the above outlined considerations to creators in the KM3NeT
context, the copyright notices should cite the actual copyright holder,
which are in most cases the contracting institutes rather than the
creator/researcher, or various institutes for joint efforts, or the full
list of KM3NeT members and institutes regarding such high-level products
into which the full collaborative effort was invested.
Note that the copyright holder might in most cases not agree with the
author and / or contributors, as dedicated material to KM3NeT is mostly
governed by the employment status of the creator to their respective
institutes. For practical reasons, however, it is recommended to
attribute the copyright to "the KM3NeT collaboration" where possible,
and link these as matter of completeness to the full list of authors and
member institutes at the time of licensing. In addition to that,
(primary) authors and contibutors should be listed separately from the
license.
For the **full list of authors and institutes**, a file for each year
should be made available citing the current author list which is linked
to the license, and is (as first installation) available
`here `__.
It is also recommended that licensing to the KM3NeT Collaboration
follows internal reviewing processes, e.g. approval by the Publication
Committee for open access material and an internal reviewing process for
software and data by the yet needed open science committee. `Discussion
Issue #5 `__
.. [1]
Indicator RDA-R1.1, in RDA (2020): FAIR Data Maturity Model:
specification and guidelines, DOI:
`10.15497/rda00045 `__
.. [2]
e.g. by WTO regulations (TRIPS agreement, `Berne
Convention `__) to
regulate international copyright
.. [3]
Kreutzer, T., Lahmann, H., Rechtsfragen bei Open Science, 2019,
https://dx.doi.org/10.15460/HUP.195
.. [4]
Ball, A. (2014). ‘How to License Research Data’. DCC How-to Guides.
Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre. Available online:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides
.. [5]
Including a `Commission
Recommendation `__
on the management of intellectual property.