Determine Open Source License plan

[ultrasaurus]

I'd like us to have some kind of open source license such that anyone can borrow our policy language, if that is helpful, but of course that shouldn't give them license to use as is (with our name and stuff), so this needs a bit of thought.

[paulproteus]

In general, copyright licenses aren't trademark licenses, so I think this is a non-issue, and any license such as the Apache License 2.0 that is aware of this is a good choice.

Other licenses could be good choices, too; I haven't done a full thoughtful analysis.

Here's what Apache License 2.0 says:

6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file.

My default advice is the Apache License 2.0 for all things, due to its thoughtful (and FSF-approved, not that you necessarily care) patent and trademark text.

[ultrasaurus]

I've been advised by lawyers long ago that code licenses (like MIT, and maybe Apache) aren't appropriate for "content" -- for RailsBridge documentation lawyer advised that we specifically say code was MIT and course material was some appropriate Creative Commons license. We need to explicitly think about the context for a CC-BY (e.g. what if our text was used by a group that did not share our values, just as a white supremacist organization, how would we want it to be attributed? might be worth specifying text to be included as attribution)

[kinseydurhamgrace]

The bigger problem: When we incorporated and became our own 501c3, we did the first wave of legal policy set up. There is no corporate structure that is grassroots. Ability to self organize and have an organization that is corporate is very complicated. Anyone can use our documentation using our open source license and can call it a Bridge workshop. We provide resources (open source materials). We need all of the Bridges and all of the websites to have this particular open source license. @ultrasaurus cannot remember which ones we have done it for.

• Potentially add a volunteer to the Governance committee to focus on this?
• Find the license that we discussed with the lawyers
• Ensure that all of the Bridge websites have this open source license