On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Peter Cock <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Andreas Tille <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Could anybody contact UniProt whether this whole issue is not intended >> but just an effect of not (yet) updated web page? >> >> Kind regards >> >> Andreas. > > I've emailed a contact at UniProt to try and find out more, and in particular > who we should be speaking to. > > Peter > > CC'ing Peter Rice from EMBOSS in case he isn't on this list, given > the recent discussion stemmed from packaging EMBOSS: > > http://lists.open-bio.org/pipermail/emboss/2011-July/004161.html > http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2011/07/msg00146.html >
Dear all, I have now emailed UniProt regarding the recent discussion on the Debian-Med list about the UniProt CC BY-ND 3.0 licence stemming from the inclusion of example data from UniProt in EMBOSS (and potentially other open source tools like BioPerl and Biopython). My email has been received by the UniProt help desk system, which assigned reference [help #61792] which should be included in the email subject of any follow up correspondence. The automated reply also warned that during the summer holiday period (until end of August) there may be some delays in dealing with queries. Regards, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Peter Cock <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 11:19 AM Subject: UniProt CC BY-ND 3.0 licence To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected], Jerven Bolleman <[email protected]> Dear UniProt, I'm contacting this address as suggested by Jerven Bolleman (who works on the UniProt website). My query concerns the UniProt CC BY-ND 3.0 licence. Note that the Creative Commons has revised its advice and now does not recommend Creative Commons licenses for scientific databases: http://sciencecommons.org/resources/faq/databases/ I contribute to Biopython and other open source projects too, such as EMBOSS. An issue was recently raised regarding the packaging of EMBOSS in Debian and the problem of EMBOSS including some UniProt files as test data: http://lists.open-bio.org/pipermail/emboss/2011-July/004161.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2011/07/msg00146.html According to http://www.uniprot.org/help/license sample records would be licensed under the CC BY-ND 3.0 licence. which has a number of problems - first of which is it is incompatible with Debian policy. This likely affects other biological libraries which bundle sample data, including BioPerl and Biopython. Second, the no derivatives part of the current license appears to prevent simple tasks like format shifting: http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2011/08/msg00101.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2011/08/msg00102.html Another concern is "attribution stacking" (which worries me for practical usage of semantic reasoning and cross-database searches), as discussed by the Creative Commons here: http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protocol/ Please feel free to forward this message to anyone at UniProt who can discuss this issue - ideally openly on the debian-med mailing list since that is where most of the debate has occurred to date, http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/ Thank you, Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAKVJ-_6-nEadtEpgZAPo-1omb=eytorqjzhumg-ph-6vlkk...@mail.gmail.com
