[open-science] Announcing the open source release of scholarly publishing platform, sci.pe

Fri Jul 12 21:19:03 UTC 2019

Thanks for reaching out,

Our intent is to have the source code under the AGPL3 license and sell
exceptions in the spirit of
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.en.html

Our inspiration has been the QT project (https://www.qt.io/download).

We know that dual-licensing can be controversial and we took that decision
with caution, but we feel that it serves the best possible compromise for
this particular code-base.

If you would be open to a call we would appreciate any guidance.

On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 4:48 PM Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> I do not understand the licence that you use. It does not appear to be
> compliant with OSI or the Open Definition.
>
> On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 8:37 PM Tiffany Bogich <tiffany at sci.pe> wrote:
>
>> We are excited to announce the open-source release of our scholarly
>> publishing platform sci.pe.
>>
>
> You describe this as "open source" presumably compliant with
> https://opensource.org/ (OSI).
>
>
>> To view the full announcement, visit:
>> https://research.sci.pe/ballesteros2019b. sci.pe source code can be
>> found on Github: https://github.com/science-periodicals and sci.pe
>> vision at https://sci.pe/get-started/vision.
>>
>
> Your Github repo has no LICENSE.md . You state:
> "@scipe/api is dual-licensed under commercial and open source licenses (
> AGPLv3 <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html>) based on the
> intended use case. Contact us to learn which license applies to your use
> case."
>
> This implies that the license is dependent on the user, their motivation
> ("based on the intended use case") and their business.
>
>
>> We are trying a dual license approach so that not-for-profit, open access
>> journals can benefit from the platform free of charge while still allowing
>> sci.pe to continue development with the support of our cloud offering
>> and commercial license options.
>>
>
> Open Source (https://opensource.org/osd-annotated ) deliberately makes
> >>>6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
>
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a
> specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program
> from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
>
> *Rationale:* The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license
> traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want
> commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.
> >>>
> Therefore I do not see how, from what you have said, that the program is
> "open source"
> (technically A/GPL is Free software, not Open, you appear not to be
> compliant with either.)
>
> I hope this is of interest and if you would like more information feel
>> free to contact us (contact at sci.pe) or follow us on github (
>> science-periodicals <https://github.com/science-periodicals>) or twitter
>> (@scipeTweets <https://twitter.com/scipeTweets>).
>>
>> In essence, if you licence your software under any F/OSS licence , the
> licensee can be of any type (profit, non-profit) and the software can be
> used for any legal purpose whether for profit or not.
>
>
>> Tiffany Bogich, PhD
>> Co-founder, sci.pe (science periodicals)
>> 7 World Trade Center, 46th Floor
>> New York, New York 10007
>>
>> mobile: +1 917 882 5422
>> email: tiffany at sci.pe
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
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