Licenses

Licenses Copyright, Copyleft, GPL, CC, ...
This is a very large, complex, and complicated topic.

Our goal is to paint a very broad brush picture of the topic, with links to more detailed information.

Our teams need to understand the choices they have. And what we will do if they do not choose.

Before Richard Stallman's work there were only two kinds of software proprietary and public domain.

Proprietary
Proprietary software is intellectual property owned by a person, corporation, etc. It is protected copyright, patent, or trade secret. It's owners sell their customers a license to use.

Public Domain
Public Domain software is software that has given away by its authors. Everyone is allowed to do anything with it.

Richard Stallman
"In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly-installed laser printer, the Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be free to modify the software they use." Wikipedia

Across An Ideological Spectrum from The Four Freedoms to Open Source
In response to the printer nightmare Stallman dreamed of a hacker utopia, where all computer users enjoyed and respected the Four Freedoms.

The Four Freedoms
An excerpt from The Free Software Definition as paraphrased in the Wikipedia.


 * Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
 * Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
 * Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
 * Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code is highly impractical.

Copyright
No matter what choices the author makes: It all begins with establishing a copyright, which allows you to control how your work is used and distributed.

Then you grant licenses to use and/or distribute your work as you see fit.

CC

 * Creative Commons
 * Creative Commons Licenses

Open Source

 * Open Source Initiative
 * Open Source Licenses
 * Open Source Definition

Challenge Policy
Note: challenge:Copyrights doesn't exist.

I propose:
 * We strongly encourage teams to make their own choices
 * If a team chooses a restrictive license,
 * the challenge requires the team to grant the challenge a license that allows us to publish the team's work in print and on the web.
 * Perhaps Creative Commons: Attribution-NonComercial-No Derivs
 * If a team does not make a choice the license defaults to
 * GPLv3 for code
 * Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike for other materials.