Recommended implementation approach for "license choice" drop down?

Policy and Research
1

Hi all,

Some friends and I are creating a new data sharing platform (dbhub.io), which (when it’s ready) will provide GitHub/Gitea-like collaboration features. eg forking/merging/issues

As part of the implementation, we need to provide a choice of appropriate licenses. Likely a drop down list + generic “Other” field.

This is for when people upload a data set. There is an upload page which needs info about the data set to be filled out. eg name, description, public or private, and license

I’ve looked around for clear guidance (for implementors), but haven’t found anything. :frowning:

Have I missed something obvious?

If not, we’ll need to figure out what to include in the license drop down list and how to display it. Maybe something like:

Recommended

  • Creative Commons CCZero (CC0)
  • Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL)
  • Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0)
  • Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY)
  • Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
  • Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL)

Deprecated

  • Against DRM
  • Creative Commons Attribution versions 1.0-3.0
  • Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike versions 1.0-3.0
  • Data licence Germany – attribution – version 2.0
  • Data licence Germany – Zero – version 2.0
  • Design Science License
  • EFF Open Audio License
  • Free Art License (FAL)
  • GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL)
  • MirOS License
  • Open Government Licence Canada 2.0
  • Open Government Data License Taiwan 1.0
  • Open Government Licence United Kingdom 2.0 and 3.0
  • Talis Community License

Other

  • Custom license (fill out details below) ← This would have a matching text area below for cut-n-pasting license info

Also, how granular should we keep this licensing choice? We’re intending to have strong version control as a core part of the platform (eg for publishing as “reference” material).

My initial thought is we should keep the license information stored along with each version of a data set. That way if someone changes their license of a data set they publish then that choice would only apply from that version onwards. Otherwise, it would seem like all previous versions use the new license as well which I feel could lead to problems.

Thoughts? :slight_smile:

2

Bit of a tangent but you may find this licence chooser article interesting - via CC Platform Toolkit

3

Thanks @Stephen, yeah. That’s similar to the concept I’m thinking of. :slight_smile:

4

Looking through it further, it has much more fully worked out process pieces than I’d thought through so far.

I’ve circled back to it later on in the day for insight, and will adapt our licensing selection approach over the next few days.

Thanks @Stephen. :smiley:

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