[Ctk-developers] COPYRIGHT & LICENSING

Tarbox, Lawrence tarboxl at mir.wustl.edu
Tue Apr 13 15:16:43 UTC 2010 

I concur with Stephen.

The pure BSD license does not address certain key issues, such as patents, trademarks, and contributions, that potentially could be very problematic in an open source project with multiple contributors from multiple organizations.  The Apache license closes those holes, while still being essentially a BSD license at its core.  (Compare the text of clauses 3, 8, and 9 with the BSD license - they are nearly identical to the BSD license.)

As far as I know, there is little problem including BSD code in a project licensed under Apache, as long as there are no problems with patent or trademark infringements in the BSD code.

My recollection of the previous discussions was more that we did not want CTK to use a 'copyleft' license, such as GPL, and that we preferred a more commercial friendly license with terms similar to BSD.  The discussion brought out that most of the code that we already use has been released under licenses with terms similar to BSD, though not everyone was using a pure BSD license.  I believe Apache has terms similar to and compatible with BSD, and would be a better match to our needs than simple BSD.





-----Original Message-----
From: ctk-developers-bounces at commontk.org [mailto:ctk-developers-bounces at commontk.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Aylward
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 8:45 AM
To: Marco Viceconti
Cc: ctk-developers at commontk.org
Subject: Re: [Ctk-developers] COPYRIGHT & LICENSING

Hi,

The Apache 2.0 license is actually a BSD-style license.  It is the
new-BSD license with two additional paragraphs that are important
based on our experiences with ITK.  Note that ITK is now released
under the Apache 2.0 license.

There are some great articles on the benefits of Apache 2.0, such as
"Apache better than GPL for open-source business?"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10229817-16.html

The full text of the license is available at:
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

A FAQ on the Apache 2.0 license is at:
http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html

Below is my interpretation of those two additional paragraphs:

First paragraph
=============
"Submission of Contributions. Unless You explicitly state otherwise,
any Contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Work by
You to the Licensor shall be under the terms and conditions of this
License, without any additional terms or conditions. Notwithstanding
the above, nothing herein shall supersede or modify the terms of any
separate license agreement you may have executed with Licensor
regarding such Contributions."

The above says that by contributing changes back to the main
repository, you're agreeing to release your changes also under the
Apache 2.0 license.  Without this additional paragraph we'll need to
specify licensing terms for every change to the code made by any
contributor - that isn't feasible. Again, this paragraph does not
request copyright transfer, just a license to redistribute, use etc.

Second paragraph
===============
"Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this
License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide,
non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated
in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to
sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such
license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such
Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s)
alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to
which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent
litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim
in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated
within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent
infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this
License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation
is filed."

This paragraph says that if you submit code to the repository you're
also granting everyone a license to use that code even if you've filed
for a patent that the code implements.  Consider that if someone adds
something to the CTK core that is covered by one of their own patents,
then we may end up being sued (it really does happen way too often in
America), having to pay them money to use CTK, or having to re-write
that code.

Hope this helps,
Stephen

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Marco Viceconti <viceconti at tecno.ior.it> wrote:
> If I understand correctly the discussion so far, it seems that under an
> appropriate FOSS license the tracking of copyright is unnecessary. Still, I
> disagree that it is irrelevant, as in addition to the personal proudness
> there is also an institutional proudness, that tracking copyright to the
> institution that contributed with a portion of code, somehow sustains.
>  Because of this I would suggest that each contributor should have the right
> to keep the copyright to his-her own institution.
>
> For the license, I agree with Luis that the choice is between an handful of
> options, such as MIT, BSD and Apache 2.0 licenses.  Indeed, this point was
> extensively discussed in one of the first meetings of the CTK Group, as
> correctly pointed out by Jörg Riesmeier.  In that meeting we noticed that a)
> many of our frameworks and libraries are distributed under BSD, and b) that
> BSD has all the features we thought the CTK should had.
> http://www.commontk.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/Whitepaper#BSDstylelicense
>
> Of course nothing is carved in stone, but I do not thing we should simply
> ignore what has been already extensively discussed.  Thus, I would suggest
> to consider the topic in this light: there is decision in favour of BSD.  Is
> there any argument that makes Apache 2.0 preferable over BSD? If we opt for
> Apache 2.0, is there any problem in re-using inside CTK code licensed under
> BSD, such as DCMTK?
>
> A last comment: while Apache 2.0 is clearly a more modern option, BSD has
> beauty of being the clearest license you can read.  Now if it is true, like
> many says that in the end you get the same protection with both, I would opt
> for BSD if nothing else only for this.
>
> Cheers
>
> Marco
>
>
>
> Il giorno 12 Apr 2010, alle ore 16:23, Luis Ibanez ha scritto:
>
>>
>> I agree with Bill,
>>
>> The choice of a good License is more important that who holds the
>> Copyright (and patents, and trademarks) associated with the code.
>>
>>
>> In practice, tracing the Copyright holders of code in an Open Source
>> project is an impossible task.
>>
>>
>> Whoever is contributing code to an Open Source project with the
>> intention of conserving ownership or control over such code has
>> flawed understanding of how software development works in a
>> peer-production environment.
>>
>>
>> Files tend to (and *should*) be modified by many different developers,
>> who are affiliated to different institutions. Every institution will hold
>> the
>> copyright of every modification.
>>
>>
>> You may know "who" is the copyright holder of a file, the first day that
>> file
>> is committed. But after ten years of this file being modified and
>> retouched
>> by twenty other developers from ten other institutions, you have a file
>> where
>>
>>
>> 55% of the lines are copyrighted by institution A
>> 27% by institution B
>> 13% by institution C..
>> ... and so on.
>>
>>
>> In a well-managed open source project, such modifications of any given
>> file by many different developers *is expected* to happen.
>>
>> When a file has only been touched by a single developer, that's an
>> indication
>> that nobody else in the project cares about such file, and that the
>> project has
>> poor practices of code review and suffers from lack of participation.
>>
>> So, even if any given organization want to conserve "ownership" of the
>> code, that is simply unrealistic in practice.
>>
>> Assigning copyright of the code to a non-for-profit organization is
>> actually
>> a way of protecting the developers (and their institutions).
>>
>> This is discussed in great detail in:
>>
>>  "Intellectual Property and Open Source
>>  A Practical Guide to Protecting Code"
>>  by Van Lindberg
>>  http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517960
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> In any case, what is more important is to chose a License, that make
>> irrelevant
>> (and unnecessary) to track ownership of the source code. The MIT, BSD and
>> Apache 2.0 licenses are typical good choices that satisfy such condition.
>>
>>
>> The Apache 2.0 license is particularly attractive in this case because it
>> is
>> the only one from this group, that includes specific clauses about code
>> contributions.
>>
>>
>>
>>         Luis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 8:39 AM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> I agree with that license is more important that the copyright holders.
>>
>> In VTK, many files have multiple copyrights, but all share the same
>> license.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Ron Kikinis <kikinis at bwh.harvard.edu>
>> wrote:
>> > Luis,
>> >
>> > The apache license sounds reasonable to me. In terms of making ISC the
>> > owner
>> > of the copyright:
>> > As you know, we have taken a different approach with Slicer in that the
>> > contributors keep the copyright and only grant an irrevocable and
>> > unlimited
>> > license for use in Slicer (I am not a lawyer so this is not legal
>> > language).
>> >
>> > On an other point: ISC was created to hold the copyright for ITK. The
>> > website does not really reflect the more recent additions of cmake and
>> > IGSTK. The board of directors primarily reflects ITK and would probably
>> > require some updates.
>> >
>> > One question: how "dictator proof" is ISC?
>> >
>> > Ron
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On 4/9/10 10:36 AM, Luis Ibanez wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Yes,
>> >> it is not the most amusing conversation to have,
>> >> but it is better to do this early...
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>    1) Most files in CTK are lacking Copyright
>> >>        notices and an explicit License.
>> >>
>> >>    2) There is not LICENCE file at the top of
>> >>        the source tree.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> I propose that we assign the copyright of the source code
>> >> to the Insight Software Consortium (ISC), and that we
>> >> distribute the code under an Apache 2.0 License.
>> >>
>> >>   http://www.opensource.org/licenses/apache2.0.php
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> The ISC is the organization that holds the copyright of
>> >>
>> >>           *  ITK
>> >>           *  CMake (along with Kitware)
>> >>           * IGSTK
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> More information about the ISC at:
>> >>
>> >>     http://www.insightsoftwareconsortium.org/
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> It will also be important for your respective organizations
>> >> to join the ISC, or for you to join as individuals, so you
>> >> help ensure that the CTK project is managed as you
>> >> intended.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Every day that passes without having a clear License
>> >> and Copyright statement is a day were we are brewing
>> >> a recipe for disaster.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> If someone needs to be persuaded, we can provide details
>> >> on the horror story of how much trouble we are having in ITK
>> >> with source code of dubious origin (no copyright notice nor
>> >> license) that we adopted from   www.netlib.org....
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>       Luis
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Ctk-developers mailing list
>> >> Ctk-developers at commontk.org
>> >> http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ctk-developers
>> >
>> > --
>> > Ron Kikinis, M.D.,
>> > Robert Greenes Distinguished Director of Biomedical Informatics
>> > Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School
>> > Director, Surgical Planning Laboratory
>> > http://www.spl.harvard.edu/~kikinis
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Ctk-developers mailing list
>> > Ctk-developers at commontk.org
>> > http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ctk-developers
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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>
> --------------------------------------------------
> MARCO VICECONTI, PhD                             (viceconti at tecno.ior.it)
> Laboratorio di Tecnologia Medica              tel.   39-051-6366865
> Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli                            fax.   39-051-6366863
> via di Barbiano 1/10, 40136 - Bologna, Italy
>
> Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright in the forest of the night,
> what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
> --------------------------------------------------
> Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer
>
>
>
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--
Stephen R. Aylward, Ph.D.
Director of Medical Imaging Research
Kitware, Inc. - North Carolina Office
http://www.kitware.com
stephen.aylward (Skype)
(919) 969-6990 x300
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