Upgrade to Creative Commons 4.0 license

[rjyounes]

We are using version 3.0. We should consider upgrading to 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

This involves changing license.txt and updating the release announcement.

We will need Dave's input on this one.

[uscholdm]

* We are using [Creative Commons] version 3.0. We should upgrade to 4.0 Are they backwards compatible 😊 M.

[rjyounes]

Good question. I've modified the issue to "consider upgrade." I was assuming that since they replaced 3.0 with 4.0, that is the one that should be used, but I could be wrong. Needs further investigation.

[Jamie-SA]

Yes, the changes should be reviewed. Sometimes you might not agree with the changes. That happened when the GNU Public License went from v2 to v3 (I think), many people balked and refused to update to it.

[rjyounes]

See https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator-5f6360713299, which makes this more urgent.

[rjyounes]

Steps involved:

1. Select license using CC's license chooser and based on other information on the site.
2. Update LICENSE.txt in repository
3. Update gist:license value in gistCore
4. Update gist page on website. Note: some of the current language is unclear and contradictory; this needs to be reviewed and modified with care. E.g., at the top of the page it is claimed that "You can use gist as you see fit for any purpose, just give us attribution." This is not the case, as indicated further down the page, which adds "Any concepts used from gist are to remain in the gist namespace." The language needs to be updated based on careful review of the CC 4.0 license selected.

[rjyounes]

Dave filled out the license chooser and got the following from Creative Commons:

You have selected Attribution 4.0 International.
You should include a reference to this on the web page that includes
the work in question.

Here is the suggested HTML:

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>.

Tips for marking your work can be found at
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking. Information on the supplied HTML and
metadata can be found at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_REL.

[rjyounes]

Details on this license are found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The issue I see with this license is that it allows users to “remix, transform, and build upon…” which doesn’t include our restriction against making changes within the gist namespace. I wonder how to handle that – I know currently we just have a note on the website to that effect. I assume the CC licenses are not specialized enough to include that sort of clause. The best thing to do would be to consult a lawyer but we probably don't want to incur the expense.

[rjyounes]

Email discussion:

Peter 2022-03-11:

asked colleagues in W3C about our challenge regarding the namespace.

Hi Peter,

I talked about this with Wendy and Ralph and here is what I understand.

It is considered best practice that namespaces be dereferenceable.

Since the user has no control over the domain of the namespace, they
can't really put anything useful there (and worst, they are at the mercy
of the domain owner).

Legally speaking, there is nothing that would prevent the user from
using something like https://google.com/ns/#Person , except for
trademark infringement at most.

Rebecca:

What they say is correct, but not applicable outside of the semantic web (aka LOD). Within an enterprise you can make any assertions you want, since the URIs are not being dereferenced.

Peter:

What they say is correct, but not applicable outside of the semantic web (aka LOD). Within an enterprise you can make any assertions you want, since the URIs are not being dereferenced.