053.3 Lesson 1
Certificate: |
Open Source Essentials |
---|---|
Version: |
1.0 |
Topic: |
053 Open Content Licenses |
Objective: |
053.3 Other Open Content Licenses |
Lesson: |
1 of 1 |
Introduction
Previous lessons have already introduced the concept of open content, focusing on Creative Commons licenses. In addition to Creative Commons licenses, however, there are other open content licenses, some of which relate to specific content and are also regularly used for “by-products” (such as documentation) of open source projects.
Licenses for (Software) Documentation
Large software repositories regularly contain documentation or manuals for the software in addition to the code. Documentation usually contains various copyrightable elements, such as explanatory texts, illustrative graphics, or code examples. Open source licenses that apply to the contents of a repository are generally also applicable to such texts if no other information is available; for example, GPLv3.0 applies to “any copyrightable work” and is not limited to code.
However, documentation is often subject to different license conditions. This can make sense for various reasons, because documentation is produced and used differently from code. The license conditions of a strict copyleft license for computer programs may, for instance, prevent the adoption of individual parts of the documentation for other programs. It is also unclear what is meant when the “source code” is to be provided for GPLv3.0-licensed documentation. In addition, it used to be common practice to distribute printed versions of documentation or manuals for programs. This circumstance can be better taken into account by specific documentation licenses (for example, if some license obligations are linked to a certain number of distributed copies).
Creative Commons licenses are often used for documentation, but there are also special copyleft licenses for documentation, such as the Free Documentation License (FDL), which explains its purpose in its preamble:
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document “free” in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of “copyleft,” which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
Preamble
The license is very specific to documentation; for example, it also addresses printed versions. In particular, a copyleft documentation license explicitly does not affect the code with which it is delivered. Although it would also be possible to distribute documentation under GPLv3.0 together with MIT-licensed code: Since in this case there would be two independent works, the GPLv3.0 of the documentation would not result in the code having to be licensed under GPLv3.0. But a dedicated license for documentation provides more clarity in this regard.
Licenses for Databases
There are also special licenses for databases. Among other things, these licenses take into account the use of a database as a resource for a program and the special features of copyright protection for databases.
What the Term “Database” Applies to
In copyright law, a distinction is made in some legal systems (including in Europe) between database works that, like other copyright-protected works (images, texts, etc.), enjoy protection on the basis of personal intellectual creation (selection and arrangement of elements), and databases for whose production (procurement, verification, presentation) a substantial investment was required (database right).
In both cases, the object of protection is a collection of independent elements (such as distinct works or items of data) that are systematically or methodically arranged and individually accessible electronically or by other means. The copyrightability of the elements themselves is not important, so they can also be mere numerical values.
A collection of data can therefore be protected by copyright as a database work or under database right (in the EU). For a database work to be protected, the arrangement and selection of the elements must express a personal intellectual creation. This is unlikely to be the case for data collections that are used as the basis for software — but these can be protected under database right. To earn this right, a substantial investment must have been made in the collection and arrangement of the elements. This investment can also consist of time and human resources.
Various licenses are now available for databases and data collections that better cover the use of data than “classic” open source software licenses. Let’s take a look at the distinction using an example.
As part of an academic research project, all of an author’s poems are to be collected and published on a website, where they are sorted alphabetically by title and can be accessed individually. However, the project requires that the relevant copyrights for the distribution and reproduction of the poems are obtained from the author. License fees are paid for this.
The license fees may constitute a “substantial investment.” Since the poems are individually retrievable and arranged systematically (according to the alphabet), the database serving the poems is protectable under database right. However, the elements (poems) were not specifically selected (the selection was done on the basis of completeness) and the arrangement is not creative, but purely systematic. There is therefore no personal intellectual creation in relation to the database, so that the database does not qualify as a database work.
If, on the other hand, the poems had been arranged and selected according to certain criteria — for example to document certain motifs in the author’s work in the context of the creative period — a personal intellectual creation could exist, and then this collection of poems would be protectable as a database work.
However, the two categories are treated differently under copyright law, in particular with regard to the term of protection: databases under the database right are protected only 15 years after production/publication, as opposed to 70 years after the death of the author for database works.
Delimitation for Data
The data contained (in our example, the poems) must always be considered separately from the database as a whole, because they may (but need not) be eligible for protection in their own right and may therefore be subject to different license conditions. For example, the collection of poems may be subject to the Open Database License (see below), while the individual poems may be subject to a Creative Commons license or a proprietary license.
Delimitation for Database Management System (DBMS)
In addition, the software for managing the data, the so-called database management system (DBMS), which is not considered part of the database under copyright law, but as a means of accessing the data, must be considered separately under copyright law. Such applications — such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and others — are to be considered separately as computer programs and are protectable as such.
Datasets for Training Machine Learning Models
Various collections of data can be downloaded from websites such as huggingface.co or kaggle.com, for example to train machine learning models. Such collections, also known as datasets, are usually subject to database right, provided a “substantial investment” has been made in their production (which is usually not readily apparent from the outside).
The term “dataset” is somewhat vague because it can refer to a line in a database — i.e., an entry or a definable element — but also to collections of data or datasets.
Open Database License (ODbL)
These distinctions are also visible in the Open Database License (ODbL), a widely used license in the database sector. The ODbL was developed by Open Data Commons, a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation. The license makes a clear distinction in its preamble between protection of the database and protection of the individual contents of the database. The license refers only to the former, while the contents can also be licensed elsewhere independently of this.
Of course, it is still possible to choose the same license for the database and the content, e.g., to compile a collection of works licensed under CC-BY-4.0 in a database that is in turn licensed under CC-BY-4.0.
The best license for the database depends on the objectives of the database producer. To stay with our example of the poetry collection: If the poetry database is to be modified at will and may also be distributed under other license conditions, the ODbL would not be the right choice. This is because the ODbL contains a copyleft for databases, which means that a database derived from an ODbL-licensed database (e.g. a database that adopts all elements and the arrangement of the elements of the original database and adds others) may be redistributed only under the same conditions. In this case, a Creative Commons license with editing rights (e.g. CC-BY) is a better choice.
The ODbL also makes it clear that it in no way applies to computer programs that manage the database (i.e., a DBMS): “This License does not apply to computer programs used in the making or operation of the Database.”
However, the license stipulates that a work created from the contents of the database and available for public use (a so-called produced work) must at least indicate which database (not DBMS) was used for it and that the the database itself may be used under the conditions of the ODbL. An example of such a produced work is a street map created from the coordinates collected in the database.
If one of the known (software-specific) copyleft licenses such as GPLv3.0 were used for a database, it can be assumed that a computer program that uses the database (e.g. for a store system) could be distributed only under the terms of GPLv3.0. The license of a DBMS, on the other hand, is likely to be independent of the license of the database because the DBMS is not considered a “derived work” of the database; it merely enables access and editing and is therefore an independent work.
Community Data License Agreements (CDLA)
The Community Data License Agreements (CDLA), a project of the Linux Foundation, also focuses on the licensing of data (as distinct from software). Training data collections for machine learning systems can also be the subject of CDLAs.
Our communities wanted to develop data license agreements that could enable sharing of data similar to what we have with open source software. The result is a large scale collaboration on licenses for sharing data under a legal framework which we call the Community Data License Agreement (CDLA).
These licenses establish the framework for collaborative sharing of data that we have seen proven to work in open source software communities.
The CDLA is therefore based on a framework that takes into account different levels of licensing issues, especially when data is compiled from multiple sources by different contributors. In our example, this could be a collection in which different authors contribute their own poems to build a common poetry database.
CDLA distinguishes between the “inbound license” for data that is added to the collection and the “outbound license” for the use of the data. At a third level, it specifies requirements for the organization that hosts or holds the data.
To stay with the poetry example: An author who contributes their poem would be guided by the specifications for “inbound licenses”. The “outbound license” concerns the conditions agreed upon by the editors of the poetry collection as a whole.
Similar to the open source licenses for software, CDLAs are available in the permissive and sharing categories, which we will briefly introduce. A visit to the aforementioned kaggle.com or huggingface.co websites will give you an impression of which licenses are used for databases or datasets: For example, you can use filters to find out which data collections are offered under CDLA.
Community Data License Agreement — Permissive
Version 2.0 of the permissive CDLA has been available since 2021 and is much more concise and clearly formulated than version 1.0.
Version 1.0 grants rights to use and publish the licensed data, including the publication of so-called “enhanced data,” which also includes edits or additions to the dataset. When passing on or publishing the data, basic license obligations must be observed; among other things, the license text must be passed on, changes must be marked, and copyright notices must be retained. The data can also be passed on under additional or other license conditions.
In version 2.0, the wording “enhanced data” is no longer used; instead, the granting of rights is formulated more precisely:
A Data Recipient may use, modify, and share the Data made available by Data Provider(s) under this agreement if that Data Recipient follows the terms of this agreement.
version 2.0
The only condition for sharing the data in version 2.0 is the passing on of the license text or a link to the license text.
Community Data License Agreement — Sharing
The sharing version of the CDLA, which is currently only available in version 1.0, contains a copyleft for data in such a way that the transfer (“publish”) of “enhanced data” is permitted only under the same conditions.
The Data (including the Enhanced Data) must be Published under this Agreement in accordance with this Section 3;
version 1.0
Open Access
One term that is often used in connection with open content is open access. Although the term is not defined in the legal sense, the declaration of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) makes the intention behind open access clear. The initiative arose from a conference in Budapest in 2001 and summarizes the international efforts for open access:
The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
Open access therefore refers in particular to free access to scientific literature and other content on the internet. The open access movement originated in the 1990s with the aim of making scientific publications available to the general public. Open access therefore does not refer to a specific license or certain licensing conditions, but rather to a concept of licensing.
When an article is published with open access, the first step is to choose an open content license, such as one of the Creative Commons licenses. However, the choice of a CC license is not mandatory for open access. Over the years, a categorization of different open access strategies has developed, which also take dual licensing into account — for example, granting a comprehensive license to a publisher while simultaneously the author offers the content for download on their own website.
Both the BOAI and the Berlin Declaration that followed two years later are important milestones in the open access movement. The preamble to the Berlin Declaration states:
In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider.
Guided Exercises
-
Can “classic” open source licenses also be used for documentation and databases?
Yes
No
It depends, there is no clear answer
-
Does it make sense to use separate licenses for documentation? Why?
-
Does it make sense to use separate licenses for databases? Why?
-
Which of the following licenses are suitable for documentation?
CC-BY-4.0
FDL
ODbL
GPL-3.0
BSD-3-Clause
-
What is meant by the term “open access”?
Explorational Exercises
-
Are there specific licenses for fonts?
-
Briefly explain two open access strategies or models.
-
What is meant by the “open definition”?
Summary
In addition to the well-known Creative Commons licenses, there are other concepts for licensing content that are even more specifically tailored to the respective data types: For software documentation or databases, the FDL or ODbL licenses are available that take into account the characteristics of these types of works. This lesson provides an overview of some of these licenses and also addresses the concept of open access.
Answers to Guided Exercises
-
Can “classic” open source licenses also be used for documentation and databases?
Yes
X
No
It depends, there is no clear answer
-
Does it make sense to use separate licenses for documentation? Why?
Yes, because they usually contain other content than the program itself. They also regulate how printouts of the documentation are to be handled, for example.
-
Does it make sense to use separate licenses for databases? Why?
Yes, it can be useful. In particular, a specific database license can achieve a copyleft effect for the database without the copyleft affecting the surrounding code. In addition, database licenses address specific provisions that copyright law provides for the protection of databases.
-
Which of the following licenses are suitable for documentation?
CC-BY-4.0
X
FDL
X
ODbL
GPL-3.0
BSD-3-Clause
-
What is meant by the term “open access”?
The term describes free access to scientific literature and other content on the internet.
Answers to Explorational Exercises
-
Are there specific licenses for fonts?
Yes, there is, for example, the SIL Open Font License (OFL), which contains a copyleft specifically for fonts, but this has no effect if fonts are used unchanged.
-
Briefly explain two open access strategies or models.
In the “Gold” open access strategy, the publication is made available directly by the publisher under an open content license, usually (but not exclusively) using Creative Commons licenses.
The “Green” open access model applies when the publisher does not distribute the publication under open access, but the author is given the opportunity to make the publication available for download, such as on their website under an open license.
-
What is meant by the “open definition”?
The “open definition” is a common understanding, formulated by the Open Knowledge Foundation, of the term “open” in “open data,” “open knowledge,” and “open content.” The definition describes in particular the basic freedoms that must be granted if a license is to be “open” in the sense of the definition. These include access, use, editing or modification, and sharing.