[okfn-discuss] Licensing question from the Open Science Training Initiative pilot

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 11:18 AM, <sophie.kershaw at keble.oxon.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> As many of you will know, I'm currently running the pilot scheme for my
> Open Science Training Initiative at the Doctoral Training Centre,
> University of Oxford.


Congratulations! My greetings to the students on the course (this has crept
up on me!). Unfortunately I am off abroad soon so can't come and look in...



> The students have taken to licensing fantastically well, even though the
> concept was completely new to *all* of them this time last week. Yesterday
> I fielded a more specific question from one of the students and was hoping
> some of the legal eagles on this list might be able to help.
>
> The student in question has developed a series of his own routines in
> Matlab and has drawn them together in a GUI, which he has also designed. He
> wanted to take a screenshot of this GUI and put it into his report.
> However, he wasn't sure how this should be licensed. If parts of the
> Mathworks Matlab interface are visible as part of his screenshot, would
> this preclude him putting say, a CC-BY license on the resulting image?
>
> I don't think there is a generic answer - you will have to read the Matlab
contract (which I assume the university has signed). It'd unlikely, though
possible, that this is specific to the licensee so you *may* have to
contact Oxford U purchasing.

Software Companies often set clauses requiring or preventing this sort of
thing. For example Gaussian Inc. (whose program solves Schroedinger's
equation) FORBID the publication of any results. This is because people
might compare the results with other programs which solve the same problem.
(BTW solving S's eqn is a billion+ industry).

OTOH I have encountered companies which require the publication of company
info. If you use the program you are contractually required to tell the
world and sometimes cite a particularly publication.

This is a compelling argument for the value of F/OSS software where all
such permissions are granted by (I think) all conformant OSI licences. Is
it possible to do the same thing in R? This area - how to compute Science
Openly and reproducibly is what I am working on at present. I can see the
possibility of tools which can do some of what Matlab can do and do it
semantically and Openly.


-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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