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I was wrong (part 2)

liorpachter.wordpress.com

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Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#31

Post by SyneRyder »

ensignavenger wrote: post #26
hprotagonist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a fun time with the library copyright office. 6 months before my thesis defense I emailed them with "hi what's policy and procedure for creative commons licenses on theses". Nobody had ever asked before... edit: my thesis is cc-by licensed.

Is it traditional for students to sign away copyright to their thesis to the University? That seems outrageous to me, but perhaps I am missing something?

One of the reasons I never continued on to do an Honours degree is because the University would have retained the copyright in my work, and the rights to license it commercially. I thought it was outrageous as well. But that was over 15 years ago, so maybe the situation has changed since.

Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#32

Post by nnutter »

BSD does not have a patent license clause so if Lior, et al. have a patent on any part of the algorithm then won’t commercial use will still be ambiguous? And even if they don’t it could still be using (infringing) on a patent of a third party. Basically software patents make using any software a risk but possibly more so when you’re using something based on novel ideas.

Edit: GPL and ASL have explicit patent clauses (obviously only applies to patents the software licensor has authority to license).

Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#33

Post by ensignavenger »

hprotagonist wrote: post #30
ensignavenger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it traditional for students to sign away copyright to their thesis to the University? That seems outrageous to me, but perhaps I am missing something?

traditionally you register a personal copyright. it's implicit if you register nothing. some students may choose to request an embargo on their thesis, in those cases where their thesis work will be published elsewhere (in a peer reviewed journal, usually), or if their thesis would constitute disclosure of something for which a patent application is underway. my thesis was boring enough to avoid those cases.

If you retained the copyright personally, why would you need permission from the university to publish your work under a creative commons license? Was it just a courtesy email to let them know your plans?

Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#34

Post by horsawlarway »

ensignavenger wrote: post #33
hprotagonist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

traditionally you register a personal copyright. it's implicit if you register nothing. some students may choose to request an embargo on their thesis, in those cases where their thesis work will be published elsewhere (in a peer reviewed journal, usually), or if their thesis would constitute disclosure of something for which a patent application is underway. my thesis was boring enough to avoid those cases.

If you retained the copyright personally, why would you need permission from the university to publish your work under a creative commons license? Was it just a courtesy email to let them know your plans?

I can't speak for OP, but in my experience it's very rare for a thesis to be just your work.

It's based on data and research often paid for by the university, and includes the work of many different people. indirectly: advisors, lab partners, professors, other students. Directly: Co-authors of papers, research assistants, and other contributors.

It's a messy bundle of work.

Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#35

Post by ensignavenger »

horsawlarway wrote: post #34
ensignavenger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you retained the copyright personally, why would you need permission from the university to publish your work under a creative commons license? Was it just a courtesy email to let them know your plans?

I can't speak for OP, but in my experience it's very rare for a thesis to be just your work. It's based on data and research often paid for by the university, and includes the work of many different people. indirectly: advisors, lab partners, professors, other students. Directly: Co-authors of papers, research assistants, and other contributors. It's a messy bundle of work.

But copyright isn't based on ideas and doesn't cover raw data/facts- it covers the expression of those ideas and the compilation of the data.

Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#36

Post by ballenf »

glangdale wrote: post #5

Good to see this change, but I wish people wouldn't go down this road to begin with. Speaking as someone who sits in industry now, I have found it almost impossible to successfully conclude negotiations between not-very-interested academics who don't really understand how licensing works (and the staff who supposedly help them) and a big, paranoid company. When you put some rando commercial license or complicated ter…

It's off-topic but a very similar argument exists for why the Facebook license + patent type arrangements(1) can cause problems for large companies or small startups that may want to be acquired later.

And I too wish that the Facebook-of-the-future don't go down this road. Number two on devs wishlist should be transparency about exactly which patents cover the code at hand. IMHO.

I draw the analogy due to the similarities of "open source" and government funded findings. Another area where these issues arise is charitable contributions that come with strings attached (like naming a building or agreeing to continue a certain program).

People like getting full recognition for the act of generosity without the cost of their strings being acknowledged or subtracted from the total.

(1) The reality of Facebook is that it's unlikely to ever be an issue, but if the arrangement becomes more commonplace the open source community could become a minefield of unquantifiable risks. I realize this is a slippery-slope argument and is thus easy to overstate.

Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#37

Post by hprotagonist »

ensignavenger wrote: post #33
hprotagonist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

traditionally you register a personal copyright. it's implicit if you register nothing. some students may choose to request an embargo on their thesis, in those cases where their thesis work will be published elsewhere (in a peer reviewed journal, usually), or if their thesis would constitute disclosure of something for which a patent application is underway. my thesis was boring enough to avoid those cases.

If you retained the copyright personally, why would you need permission from the university to publish your work under a creative commons license? Was it just a courtesy email to let them know your plans?

It was a courtesy, and also a formatting question.

Because it's going to wind up in the library archives (and proquest) for ever and ever, the university is quite strict about formatting. I checked about 6 months ahead of time to make sure that replacing the (C) symbol with the (CC) symbol on the copyright page wasn't going to cause any issues. If a thesis is not properly submitted to proquest, you don't graduate, so... wanted to tick that box off pretty early.

Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#38

Post by Gatsky »

dm319 wrote: post #23
Gatsky wrote: post #21

Some context: The blog author just wrote another post which was essentially a hatchet job on a 'rival' software package. One of the major differences between his software kallisto and the rival Salmon was the license - Salmon has a GNU General Public License.

'I was wrong' part 1 was a really a discussion about how wrong / fraudulent some authors were who published in Nature in 2004. It looks like it turned into a bit of flame-fest[1], with the original authors chipping in. [1] https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/pachters-p-valu...

No I mean this blog post: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/how-not-to-perf...

Re: I was wrong (part 2)

#39

Post by dankohn1 »

paulgb wrote: post #29
dankohn1 wrote: post #28

I'd like to commend the author for realizing that a commercial license was not achieving the goals he had for his software and being willing to own up publicly about why and how he changed directions. However, while I have used MIT/BSD-style licenses in the past, I can no longer recommend them, as they potentially open up software users to malicious submarine patent attacks. That is, a contributor can intentionally c…

Interesting, has this actually happened?

Yes, a patent-owning entity has tried to contribute code reading on that patent. Apologies that I can't give the details.
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