Code, Copyright, and Licenses: The Bare Minimum You Should Know
2016 July 21
(OK, I thought this was going to stay short, but it didn’t. For the tl;dr, scroll down to Rhetorical question #2.)
More and more astronomers are publishing the source code to the software that they write, which is awesome. Usually, though, we’re pretty sloppy about the legalities associated with publishing code. And who can blame us? That stuff is annoying and boring, right? Well … I actually think the relevant law is kind of interesting, to be honest. But even if you’re not like me, it’s important to cover your legal bases if you want other folks to use your code. Fortunately, there are only a few core concepts to understand, and to “cover your bases” you only need to do a few simple things. I’ll try to explain the whys and hows below. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.
Fact #1. If you just ignore the legal stuff, it will be illegal for anyone else to use your software! This is why you should keep reading! Of course, scientists have ignored the legalities and used each other’s software since software was invented. But it barely takes any effort to do better, and there are more and more cases where you can’t just ignore these things — think of multi-million-dollar international scientific collaborations with boards and MOUs and all that jazz. Unless they can prove that it is legal for them to use a certain piece of code, they won’t touch it. So, why is Fact #1 true? Let’s start with one little piece of theory. It’ll be quick, I promise.
Fact #2: Copyright is how we express “ownership” of intangible creative works. We have an intuitive sense of what it means to be the owner of tangible property, something like a paperback book. But what does it mean to “own” something intangible, like the novel you just wrote? You could answer that question in a lot of ways (such as by rejecting its premise). But in our legal system, when it comes to things like novels, we have a copyright system: each work has a sort-of owner, the “copyright holder,” that has the sole right to, well, make copies, in a broadly construed sense: to print a novel in book form, to let someone make a movie out of it, and so on. I own a printed paperback copy of Under the Volcano, but the estate of Malcom Lowry (probably) owns Under the Volcano, the novel.
OK. End of theory. Fact #3: (Essentially) every creative work in the US is copyrighted. Under current law, if you produce any creative work — paint a painting, write an article, take a photo, develop some software — it is automatically copyrighted, and you are the copyright holder. (Well, yes, there are exceptions, but this is a good rule of thumb.) And, therefore, if you care to assert your legal rights, no one else is allowed to reproduce your work without your permission. Tweets are likely not copyrightable but just about anything more substantial is.
Fact #4: You have to assume that creative works are copyrighted. This is why Fact #1 is true: if I find some random piece of code on the internet, I have to assume that it’s copyrighted. Even if I don’t know who the copyright holder is, I’m not allowed to reproduce it: “All rights reserved” is the default. Which means I can’t save it to my computer, and I can’t include it in my own software … I basically can’t do anything with it.
(Is it good that everything is automatically copyrighted and thus not reproducible by default? I personally think it’s terrible! I also think that intellectual property law is hugely important to our culture in ways that 99% of people just don’t perceive. For instance, a huge mass of cultural artifacts out there are “orphaned” because we don’t know or can’t find the copyright holders, and so no one is legally allowed to copy them. As it is, the relevant law is basically written by big corporations — copyright terms have been getting retroactively extended for decades basically because Disney will do everything it can to prevent Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain. But, regardless of what should be, this is how things are.)
Well, there must be a way to make things less restrictive, right? Indeed. Fact #5: Copyright holders can distribute their works with “licenses” that grant you rights you wouldn’t ordinarily have, including the right to reproduce. This is the key. The license is kind of like a take-it- or-leave-it contract that’s automatically offered to anyone coming into possession of a copy of your creative work. Typically, it says that if they meet conditions XYZ, you grant them the rights to do ABC with your work. For instance: “I generously grant you the right to make one personal copy of this nice photo … if your name is Steve, and it’s a Thursday. And you can’t show your copy to anyone else.” If you don’t like the conditions, then the default rules apply: all rights reserved. The copyright holder can distribute their work with whatever license they want.
So: If you want people to be able to use your code, it has to come with a license. Otherwise, legally speaking, they have to assume that “All rights reserved” applies. This leads to …
Rhetorical question #1: How do I figure out what to put in my license? Just use one that’s already been written! There are literally dozens of licenses specifically designed for software — different ones grant different rights and impose different conditions. This turns out to be an area where Open Source / Free Software nerds have endless, pointless, depressing internet flamewars. Just Google “GPL sucks” or something to get a taste. While I personally believe that these things really do matter and are worth debating, there are only so many hours in the day. For various Linux-nerd reasons I feel bad for saying this, but: just use the MIT License. It’s short and reasonable.
Rhetorical question #2: OK, amateur-hour internet lawyer guy … what do I actually do? I recommend that you do this:
- For every single software project that you make public in any way, include a file in the top directory named LICENSE.txt that includes the text of your license of choice.
- For every single non-trivial source code file that you make public in any way, include a two-line header comment of this form:
# Copyright 2016 Your Name <your@email>.
# Licensed under the MIT License.
You can do more, but I feel that this is the safe minimum. It’s important to include the copyright / license summary in every single file because people will extract files from random projects willy-nilly, and they are almost never good about preserving provenance information. These two lines provide the key information: who owns the copyright, how to contact them, and what the license is. If you’re in a non-small collaboration you could assign the copyright to the collaboration; this is probably a bit iffy from a legal standpoint, but it provides more of a feeling of communal ownership than a proclamation that “this file is mine!”, which is probably more important than legal iffiness unless you think there’s a significant chance that lawyers are actually going to get involved in whatever it is you’re doing.
Rhetorical question #3: Does this stuff affect anything else I do? You betcha! You know those copyright assignment forms that journals have you submit to them? Or the license terms that arxiv.org makes you choose from? Ever seen things annotated with Creative Commons licenses? Your papers are also copyrighted creative works. Hopefully you’re now armed with some insight that will help you think abot what’s going on when you assign copyright, choose an Arxiv license, etc.
Rhetorical question #4: Gosh, this is all so fascinating, how can I learn more? Innumerable pixels have been spilled discussing these topics, so just try Googling a bit (e.g.). The Free Culture Foundation is a go-to for learning about why copyright is so important to our society in general. The Choose-a-license website describes software license tradeoffs in a non-inflammatory way. The Creative Commons licenses are kind of like open-source licenses for non-software works.