Yesterday I downloaded some great software but couldn't find a license. Notably, the link from the original publication had since broken, but I could find a page with a .zip download of the source code via google.
However, I did not find any license file, only a request for citation in the user manual. I emailed the author about conditions for reuse, and she replied "All we ask is that the original work is cited and the URL of distribution is specified in any product that comes out of its use." I wanted to suggest that they adopt some best practices to facilitate reuse - add a license file, port the code to github, and assign a doi - even offer to do it. But I also wanted to justify the value of adding a license. I thought it was in the the lesson on open science, but could not find [1] it there - the section on licenses begins "The first question is licensing. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of open license ..." [2] I also don't see* any discussion of licenses in Wilson et al 2014 best practices for scientific computing [3]. I was pretty sure there are some principled motivations, such as a license makes it easy for users to know and respect the author's wishes. I'd add them to the lesson, but would appreciate if I missed the section or if anyone had any suggestions. Thanks in advance, David [1] by "find", I mean, can't find matches to my search string [2] https://software-carpentry.org/v5/novice/git/04-open.html. [3] http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001745 -- David LeBauer, PhD Research Scientist, Carl Woese Institute for Genomic Biology Fellow, National Center for Supercomputing Applications University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 1206 W. Gregory Drive Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A. office: 217-300-0266
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