[cclib-devel] about the license for cclib-data

[Karol M. L. <kar...@gm...>]

Hi guys,

I slapped a GPL license onto the new cclib-data repo, and Noel suggested that
some Public Domain license would be more appropriate. He is certainly right,
since this is data, not code, and I was thinking about CC0 or PDDL.

However, I'm not sure if it would be OK for us to claim such a blanket license
for all of the files in cclib-data. I think there are three separate issues:

1) The logfiles often contain explicit copyright messages printed by the
programs (Gaussian, ADF, etc.). Even though by common law these restrictions
do not apply to generated numeric data (which is what we are extracting),
how can we apply a PD license to such messages? They are a part of the file, no?

2) Some text is copied verbatim by the code into the logfile, which therefore
technically might be covered by copyright (if I understand these issues correctly).
Therefore, we cannot claim that the entire files are in the PD.

3) Some programs (Gaussian and others) require attribution to both the program
and publications for some specific theoretical methods. I don't think we can
release anyone who uses these files from such an obligation.

I would hesitate to modify the files in any way, which I think means effectively
that we cannot put any license on them with their current content, and we should
therefore remove the current license (it does not apply). Maybe in lieu of a license
we should add some sort of comment that includes the points listed above.

Please comment,
Karol

-- 
written by Karol M. Langner
Sat Jan  4 13:31:55 EST 2014