CC-0 for cookiecutters

[SylvainCorlay]

A license file was just added (BSD 3-clause).

I think that for most cookiecutters in the org, we opted for CC-0 #23

[jzf2101]

@SylvainCorlay Do we have documentation for that?

[SylvainCorlay]

Code snippets in documentation and examples are usually cc-0 so that people can use them to create software with other licenses.

I am posting this from my phone so I cannot look it up easily but there have been discussions in other jupyter subprojects.

[jzf2101]

I'm ok with that. I just want us to confirm this and docuement it for future reference. Will make changes following the Tuesday meeting.

[jzf2101]

@fm75 would you be interested in making this change?

[jasongrout]

I'm happy with any of my contributions to this cookiecutter to be considered public domain (e.g., CC-0). In other words, from my standpoint (i.e., my contributions here), I'm happy to have people use the output of the cookiecutter in whatever way they want.

[fcollonval]

I support to the re-licensing to CC-0.

[krassowski]

I support the re-licensing to public domain/CC-0 too.

[jasongrout]

In our JupyterLab dev meeting today, @vidartf pointed out that the cookiecutter generates an extension where the copyright is assigned to the person that ran the cookiecutter. The legal assumption here is that, as the copyright holder, presumably the person that ran the cookiecutter could then relicense their project however they wished.

That's an interesting approach to this issue. I'm really curious if other projects (or lawyers) have thought of this approach, and if it is legally sound.

[jasongrout]

If it is sound, we should probably add a note to the top-level readme, indicating to contributors the legal theory here...

[vidartf]

I'm for making all the code in this repo CC-0, since it should remove any doubt about what the licenses cover or not, and it will also make the license in the output make sense (CC-0 can, AFAIU, be re-licensed like that without issue). #notalawyer

[vidartf]

BTW, here's the list of committers according to GH: https://github.com/jupyterlab/extension-cookiecutter-ts/graphs/contributors