Software Licensing: Additional Resources

• Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility

• http://contributoragreements.org/, https://developercertificate.org/ and http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/06/09/do-not-need-cla.html

• US DOE ASCR (open source) software policy

• Your institution’s Technology Transfer Office (or equivalent)

• An Intellectual Property Lawyer (knowledgeable in software)

• Talk to colleagues and learn from their experiences

Resources recommended by others

• Neil Chue Hong (Software Sustainability Institute) in his tutorial An Introduction to Software Licensing recommends…
  • The Whys and Hows of Licensing Scientific Code
  • A Quick Guide to Software Licensing for the Scientist-Programmer
  • The Legal Side to Open Source
  • The International Free and Open Source Lawbook
  • qLegal: advice for tech start-ups + entrepreneurs
  • tl;dr legal: Software Licenses in Plain English
  • Open Source Software Watch
• Todd Gamblin (LLNL) recommends…
  • License compatibility resources
    • Open Source Licenses and their Compatibility
    • Which Licenses May Not be Included within Apache Products?
  • (Re-) Licensing considerations of various organizations
    • LLVM Contemplates Relicensing, LLVM Relicensing Effort
    • HEP Software Foundation licensing working group, particularly:
      • https://hepsoftwarefoundation.org/organization/2017/02/21/licensing.html
      • https://hepsoftwarefoundation.org/organization/2018/05/09/licensing.html included this Update on Software Licensing
    • EasyBuild: GPLv2 licensing is a big issue, consider relicensing to BSD
    • GEANT Intellectual Property Rights Policy
  • Patents in software licenses
    • Why so little love for the patent grant in the MIT License?
    • React’s New MIT License: The Circus Enters Its Third Ring
    • GitLab freezes GraphQL project amid looming Facebook patent fears
    • Rust: Rust license changing (very slightly), Why dual MIT/ASL2 license?

Related tutorial materials

• An Introduction to Software Licensing by David E. Bernholdt, from the Software Productivity and Sustainability track at the Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing, 2022
• An Introduction to Software Licensing by Neil Chue Hong