License and Copyright Policy

DataONE is developing software and distributing software that originates from multiple institutions that each have their own policies governing copyright and licensing of software. As a project, we are committed both philosophically and through our cooperative agreement with NSF to distribute our work as open source software. However, we must do so within the guidelines provided by each of our institutions. This document outlines our general policy towards the assignment of copyright and licensing of software developed as a part of DataONE activities.

Copyright

Individuals employed by different universities contribute to the development of DataONE software, and generally those individuals or the institution that employs them would hold copyright on their work. The subcontract agreements between DataONE organizations has a special condition that states that subcontractors will grant a license to work to enable the Prime Recipient to meets its obligations to NSF, but it does not transfer copyright in any way. However, essentially all DataONE software products have been and will continue to be jointly designed and created by individuals spread across the DataONE participating institutions. No one individual or institution can claim creative ownership of any of the DataONE software products. Therefore, our general policy will be that each DataONE software product will contain a copyright statement that indicates that all of the participating organizations hold joint copyright in the work.

An alternative approach to joint copyright was also considered in which individual contributors and their institutions would assign copyright to a holding entity that would ensure the long-term availability of the copyrighted materials. We did not feel that an existing University should play this role, but there was some agreement that a 501(c)(3) entity that had appropriate language built into its charter documents that would guarantee perpetual availability of the copyrighted material would be appropriate. No such entity currently exists, and the institutional agreements to contribute copyrighted materials would need to be worked out, so we felt this solution would not work for our short term needs, but should be considered for our longer-term strategy. We noted that existing groups like the Apache Software Foundation use this model effectively for cross-institutional development, although it does take overhead to create and maintain the institutional arrangements that make this model possible. Joint copyright is simpler if only because it is the de facto state of our products when multiple institutions contribute to development.

Open source licensing

Because DataONE is committed to open science and open source principles, all software developed will be licensed under an approved open source license. Because different open source licenses can have implications for the re-use and distribution of that software, we want to have a general policy that guides choice of licenses. However, we also recognize that existing software that we may wish to use may already contain existing open source licenses that can not be changed easily or at all, and we do not want as a matter of policy to exclude the use of these open source products.

We recognize the benefits of various open source licenses, but as a general policy DataONE will use the Apache 2.0 open source license for all newly developed code: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/apache2.0.php. The Apache license was selected because it:

• Grants a copyright license that allows any party to download, copy, and modify the work
• Grants a patent license for any party to use, modify, and redistribute the work
• Includes a disclaimer that the software is distributed without warranty
• Inlcudes a limitation of liability

We also considered other licenses which were not selected, including the BSD license (no patent license) and the GPL (includes requirement that derivative works also be GPL licensed).

We recognize that DataONE will likely need to incorporate other existing software products into the system, and this general license policy should not be used to exclude open source software from use within DataONE. Rather, DataONE participants can incorporate software to the extent permitted by their licenses and can contribute to other software products that use alternate licenses when it will benefit the DataONE project. Questions should be directed to the DataONE Leadership Team.

Copyright and license notification

As a consequence, each DataONE product should include a copyright and license statement in a file at the root of the source and binary distributions and in each source code file that reads:

This work was created by participants in the DataONE project, and is
jointly copyrighted by participating institutions in DataONE. For
more information on DataONE, see our web site at http://dataone.org.

  Copyright 2010

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

  http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

Each DataONE product should also include a copy of the Apache 2.0 license at the root of its source code tree in order to make the license easily accessible to people that receive the product.