Wikimedia CH/Licenses Guidelines

Warning: this page is a stub, a proposal, under review by Wikimedia CH. Thanks for any early feedback!

License Guidelines proposed by Wikimedia CH to enable software collaboration using easy legal tools.

Rationale

If you are a volunteer, contractor, cultural institution, owner of an Internet website, content creator, software creator, etc., you are encouraged to adopt Free licenses, so, to cover your work by a Free license.

A Free license allows others to improve your work. Without any indication, in fact, the "all rights reserved" applies as default, and heavily impede collaboration.

In short, a Free license allows to join the Wikimedia movement.

Out of there, there are hundreds of licenses. To save you time and difficulties, we recommend few of them.

Here a list of stable and reliable Free licenses for contents.

Licenses to Release Content

If you are an author of an original creative content, there are few Free licenses that we recommend for your work:

CC Zero - Public Domain

Creative Commons Zero (CC0)

CC0 is the most permissive tool available for releasing a work into the public domain, even if the author has not necessarily been dead for 70 years. It is recommended for explicitly releasing a data production work, or facts or other materials such as high-definition scans of works that ethically should have already fallen into the public domain (example: recommended for new high-definition scans of works by Leonardo Da Vinci, etc.). CC0 is adopted for example to release the entire dataset of Wikidata, out of over a billion pieces of information.

Although a work in the public domain does not require you to include a specific credit, you should still suggest how you would like to be cited. This will help well-intentioned people and researchers alike.

CC BY - Attribution

Creative Commons attribution (CC BY 4.0)

CC BY is probably the most widely used license in Open Access and Open Science by individual researchers. It only mandates that a precise credit be reported, e.g., to mandate reporting a link to the precise author, mentioning his or her full name, etc.

CC BY-SA - Attribution - Share-Alike

Creative Commons attribution share alike (CC BY-SA 4.0)

CC BY-SA requires that those who use the material re-share them in the same way (share alike), keeping them open (copyleft) at all times. It is a license adopted by many community projects, where one concern is that some person will take the entire project and shut it down, imposing additional restrictions. For this reason, CC BY-SA is the license of Wikipedia and many other Wikimedia projects.

Licenses to Release Free Software

These are the recommended licenses to apply to new software by legitimate authors:

GNU GPL

GNU General Public License, logo.

GNU General Public License v3+ (GNU GPL v3+): Recommended for client-side software that end users use where you want it to remain Free software.

GNU AGPL

GNU Affero General Public License, logo.

GNU Affero General Public License v3+ (GNU AGPL v3+): Recommended for server-side software, or software that is going to be installed also on a server and that you want to remain Free software.

Other Free Software Licenses

In any case, all licenses listed on this page as "free software licenses" are accepted:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

All licenses listed on this page as approved by the Open Source Initiative are also accepted:

https://opensource.org/licenses

Once the license is chosen, make sure it is present in the repository (for example in a file called LICENSE.md), and that it is mentioned in the project description (for example in the file README.md).

In the project description, mention the individual contributors, copyright holders, and list your dependencies, also to thank their authors.

Example to Release a Free Software

If you want to release a new project under the GNU AGPL license, you can download this file and save it as LICENSE.md alongside your project:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.md

Also, you can add this section in your file README.md:

== License ==

(C) PippoProject YEAR Alice Alici, Mario Rossi, and contributors

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Thank you for your contributions to this project! Code contributors are welcome to put their name in the copyright header of their edited file.

Important: never delete copyright notices. Just add them if you need more. Example, assuming that more contributors were added in different periods:

(C) PippoProject 1999-2001 Alice Alici, Mario Rossi, and contributors
(C) PippoProject 2002-2012 Alice Alici, Mario Rossi, and contributors
(C) PippoProject 2013-2024 Maria Poldini, and contributors

User Interface

From your user interface, it's important to allow users to discover your source code, your bug tracker, your license, and your dependencies.

It may be just a single link to your repository homepage called "Open Source Licenses" and "Contribute" or anything similarly clear.

Try not to hide this information, but also try to be not invasive.

FAQ

Premising that we have a very strong opinion about what is "Free" and what is not, here some frequently asked questions.

How will people give us credit?

Whatever free license you have chosen, it is advisable to indicate how you wish to be mentioned.

For example, for a high-definition scan of a work that was already in the public domain, it might make sense to write so clearly:

This content is released by Example Organization under Creative Commons Zero.

FAQ: How to Free a Website

Assuming that everything, if nothing is written on it, is to be assumed "all rights reserved, except where otherwise indicated." What we recommend is exactly the opposite.

Make sure the content is yours, or that those who have this content agree. You cannot change the license of things that are not yours.

Example to release a generic website:

 Unless otherwise indicated, data and facts presented on this website are released into the public domain.
 Except where otherwise indicated, text and multimedia materials are released under Creative Commons BY-SA.
- by Example Organization

FAQ: only-edu

Is «only for educational purposes» a Free license?

❌ No. Please don't restrict usages.

A Free content must be usable both in school and out of school.

FAQ: non-commercial

Is «suitable only for non-commercial purposes» a Free license?

❌ No. Please don't restrict usages.

If you apply a "non-commercial" restriction, it means you want a commercial monopoly, and we don't accept this power on this content.

Note that Wikipedia is allowed for all purposes, included commercial purposes, so, you don't need to contact every single human being and every single author, to have consensus to spread Wikipedia in a movie, or in a commercial radio, etc.

Note that everyone is really encouraged to sell Wikipedia if they want (as long as they respect the Wikipedia license, so, sharing enhancements back to the community).

In short, commercial use is not necessarily wrong. And, in any case, blocking commercial usages is often cause of enormous confusion and just blocks the adoption of your content by a lot of people in good faith (Wikimedians included).

Read more about why the "non-commercial" restriction is an unacceptable restriction:

https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC

FAQ: non-derivative

Is «suitable only for non-derivative purposes» a Free license?

❌ No. Please don't restrict derivative works.

Note that no one wants people to put their hands in your coputer.

People who access your work, however, should be able to have inspiration, and be able to copy it, to disseminate it with changes, making it clear what changes they have made, and giving credits to you. Derivative works are good.

Read more why a "non-derivative" restriction is unacceptable:

https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/ND

FAQ: only-ethical

Is «suitable only for ethical purposes» a Free license?

❌ No. Please don't restrict usages with copyright.

We understand some people may want to stop unpleasant parodies, or stop things like that, but copyright is not an appropriate tool to stop this kind of usages.

Premising the law above copyright. There is no need to clarify that only legal uses must be done, in your copyright license.

✔️ If you want to impose ethical restrictions, create an additional Code of Conduct instead.

FAQ: non-military

Is «suitable only for non-military purposes» a Free license?

❌ No. Please don't restrict usages with copyright.

We completely understand that you want peace, but copyright is unable to distinguish between ethical or unethical usages.

A copyright license should not define "who's defending" and "who's attacking," and to write down these limitations over these differences is dangerous and argumentative, in a copyright license.

If you do this, the result is that you simply exclude your work to the Wikimedia movement, just because of esoteric non-standard non-Free licenses.

✔️ If you want to impose ethical restrictions, create an additional Code of Conduct instead.

FAQ: esoteric-license

Can I use the new license $x $y or $z or "commons clause"? Can I use a license that is not mentioned in #Licenses to Release Content and is not mentioned in #Licenses to Release Free Software and is not mentioned in #Other Free Software Licenses? Can I use this "new license" that I'm unsure about its openness?

❌ No. Don't adopt esoteric licenses.

Also because most esoteric licenses are just proprietary licenses.

Please help those who would like to adopt your software and choose clear, famous, official, Free licenses.

FAQ: im-nonprofit so non-commercial

I'm a non-profit organization. Should I adopt a non-commercial license?

❌ No. Please don't adopt any non-commercial restriction.

Moreover, the fact that you do not share your incomes with your members, has nothing to do with additional copyright restrictions.

For example, Wikimedia Foundation is indeed a non-profit organization, but Wikipedia is indeed available to you for any purpose, also for commercial purposes.

See #FAQ: non-commercial to understand why "non-commercial" is an unacceptable restriction.

See also

• Wikimedia CH/Software Development Guidelines