<div dir="ltr">Nigel, in case there's a misunderstanding—I'm not contributing to a CC0 licensed project. A maintainer of a CC0 licensed project has requested me to re-license my ISC licensed project to CC0.<div><br></div><div>What do you mean by "<span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Modifying the stock CC0"? Did they?</span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"><br></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">And what do you mean by "</span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">they won’t use your code anyway"? They intend to use it as a dependency, via package management (Node.js/NPM) and specifically include it in their web frontend via bundling (Webpack, probably).</span></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 9:05 PM Tzeng, Nigel H. <<a href="mailto:Nigel.Tzeng@jhuapl.edu">Nigel.Tzeng@jhuapl.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Oops, hit send by accident. CC0 is also accepted as GPL compatible and is a free software license (as judged by the FSF).<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It appears to me that the maintainers want all the code and art assets under one license and they are using CC0. That’s not too uncommon in general and in this case, it makes even more sense given that shields appears to programmatically
makes badges in svg. I guess they want to be sure that all of the vectorized images that are in the repo are CC0 to try to avoid issues. The line between code and art asset are blurrier for this project than most.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">If it bothers you a lot then don’t contribute to the project but there doesn’t seem to be anything sinister about the request.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The patent provision is meaningless if you don’t own any patents used by your code. Modifying the stock CC0 probably means they won’t use your code anyway so either comply with the request or not. You aren’t obligated to contribute anything
but neither are they obligated to change policy.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Regards,<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nigel<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Nigel Tzeng <<a href="mailto:Nigel.Tzeng@jhuapl.edu" target="_blank">Nigel.Tzeng@jhuapl.edu</a>><br>
<b>Date: </b>Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 1:38 PM</span></p></div></div></div><div bgcolor="white" lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="m_-5280606411331015813WordSection1"><div style="border:none;border-top:solid #b5c4df 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"><br>
<b>To: </b>License Discuss <<a href="mailto:license-discuss@opensource.org" target="_blank">license-discuss@opensource.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [License-discuss] I've been asked to license my open source project CC0<u></u><u></u></span></p></div></div></div><div bgcolor="white" lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="m_-5280606411331015813WordSection1">
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">CC0 is accepted as open source by the federal government in the Federal Source Code Policy.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"> <u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><a href="https://code.gov/#/policy-guide/docs/overview/introduction" target="_blank">https://code.gov/#/policy-guide/docs/overview/introduction</a><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><a href="https://github.com/GSA/code-gov-web/blob/master/LICENSE.md" target="_blank">https://github.com/GSA/code-gov-web/blob/master/LICENSE.md</a><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">License-discuss <<a href="mailto:license-discuss-bounces@opensource.org" target="_blank">license-discuss-bounces@opensource.org</a>> on behalf of Christopher Sean Morrison <<a href="mailto:brlcad@mac.com" target="_blank">brlcad@mac.com</a>><br>
<b>Reply-To: </b>License Discuss <<a href="mailto:license-discuss@opensource.org" target="_blank">license-discuss@opensource.org</a>><br>
<b>Date: </b>Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 1:33 PM<br>
<b>To: </b>License Discuss <<a href="mailto:license-discuss@opensource.org" target="_blank">license-discuss@opensource.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [License-discuss] I've been asked to license my open source project CC0</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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On Nov 7, 2017, at 12:09 PM, Shahar Or <<a href="mailto:mightyiampresence@gmail.com" target="_blank">mightyiampresence@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#212121">I have been asked to change the license of an open source project of mine to CC0. I'm reluctant to do so, as it is not OSI approved.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in">That’s a reasonable concern, imho.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#212121"><a href="https://github.com/mightyiam/shields-badge-data/issues/28" target="_blank">https://github.com/mightyiam/shields-badge-data/issues/28</a></span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#212121">Is there good reason for this request, at all?</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"> <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in">There’s no technical reason. Not permitting incorporation of permissively licensed code (eg MIT) predominantly means throwing away attribution.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#212121">I mean, can they not otherwise depend on my software, if their software is CC0 licensed?</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"> <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in">If your code used a license that applied to combined works (eg GPL), there’d be an issue.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"><span style="color:black">When I conveyed my reluctance it was suggested that I dual-license.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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With CC0, I would suggest striking the patent provision or incorporating a patent grant from contributors in some manner. Dual licensing with a permissive is an option too.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in">Cheers!<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in">Sean<u></u><u></u></p>
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