ByteSized: Software Licences

This first episode of “Code for Thought ByteSized” is based on the first session in the Byte-sized RSE interactive research software training series.

The session, looking at open source software licensing, took place online on Tuesday 18th October.

Byte-sized RSE is presented in collaboration with the UNIVERSE-HPC project.

Disclaimer: The presenters and content producers for this podcast are not lawyers and do not have any legal background. The material in this podcast is not legal advice and must not be considered as such. There may be errors and we accept no responsibility or liability for actions you take based on this material. The podcast is intended to provide some high-level general background on open source software licensing and to raise awareness of the area. The content is based on our understanding and experience as research software engineers but this may not be correct in all cases. If you have questions or are unsure about any legal aspects relating to licensing of software that you are making available to others, talk to a legal professional.

Some useful links

• GNU General Public License v3.0: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html 
• BSD-3-Clause Licence: https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause 
• MIT Licence: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT 
• The Unilicense: https://unlicense.org/ 
• Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/ 
• Links to specific Creative Commons Licenses:
  • CC-BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 
  • CC-BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 
  • CC-BY-NC: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 
  • CC0: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
• Full details on Creative Commons licenses can be found at https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ 
• GitHub information on licensing a repository (GitHub documentation): https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/licen