Open licenses
'A beginning of a future library with licenses that are interesting and useful for XPUB's publications. This page is work in progress: please, feel invited to add licenses, give hints how to use them and examples of their application to publications.
CC4r
Copyleft Attitude with a difference - version 1.0
The CC4r considers authorship to be part of a collective cultural effort and rejects authorship as ownership derived from individual genius. This means to recognise that it is situated in social and historical conditions and that there may be reasons to refrain from release and re-use. The CC4r articulates conditions for re-using authored materials. It is inspired by the principles of Free Culture – with a few differences. The readers are invited to copy, distribute, and transform the materials published under these conditions, and to take the implications of (re-)use into account.
The full license information is published here and this is the link to add when using this license for your publication.
The license invites the reader to copy, distribute, and transform the materials published under these conditions, and to take the implications of (re-)use into account. The CC4r understands authorship as inherently collaborative and already-collective. It not only allows but also considers hands-on circulation as a necessary and generative activation of current, historical and future authored materials. The reader is free to (re-)use them, but is not free from taking the implications from (re-)use into account.
Publications under this license
Free Art License
The Free Art License grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works without infringing the author’s rights. This license intends to allow the use of a work’s resources; to establish new conditions for creating in order to increase creation opportunities. The Free Art License grants the right to use a work, and acknowledges the right holder’s and the user’s rights and responsibility. The main rationale for this Free Art License is to promote and protect these creations of the human mind according to the principles of copyleft: freedom to use, copy, distribute, transform, and prohibition of exclusive appropriation.
The full license information is published here and this is the link to add when using this license for your publication.
Peer Production License
2010
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License
The peer production license is an example of the Copyfair type of license, in which only other commoners, cooperatives and nonprofits can share and re-use the material, but not commercial entities intent on making profit through the commons without explicit reciprocity.
Publications under this license
Decolonial Media License 0.1
2017
https://web.archive.org/web/20211109083527/https://freeculture.org/About/license
We recognize that private ownership over media, ideas, and technology is rooted in European conceptions of property and the history of colonialism from which they formed. These systems of privatization and monopolization, namely copyright and patent law, enforce the systems of punishment and reward which benefit a privileged minority at the cost of others’ creative expression, political discourse, and cultural survival. The private and public institutions, legal frameworks, and social values which uphold these systems are inseparable from broader forms of oppression. Indigenous people, people of color, queer people, trans people, and women are particularly exploited for their creative and cultural resources while hardly receiving any of the personal gains or legal protections for their work.
We also recognize that the public domain has jointly functioned to compliment the private, as works in the public domain may be appropriated for use in proprietary works. Therefore, we use copyleft not only to circumvent the monopoly granted by copyright, but also to protect against that appropriation.
Non White Heterosexual Male License
https://nonwhiteheterosexualmalelicense.org/
If you are a white heterosexual male you are provided the same permissions (reuse, modification, resale) but are required to include this license in any documentation and any public facing derivative. You are also required to include attribution to the original author or to an author responsible for redistribution of a derivative.
Climatestrike License
2019
https://climatestrike.software/
The Software may not be used in applications and services that are used for or aid in the exploration, extraction, refinement, processing, or transportation of fossil fuels.
The (Cooperative) Non-Violent Public License
2019
https://thufie.lain.haus/NPL.html
The *Non-Violent Public License* aims to ensure basic protections against forms of violence, coercion, and discrimination which creations are frequently leveraged for in the modern world. This license covers several formats of creative work but has extra terms for software given the power it has as a tool outside of its creative capacities.
To clarify: These Licenses are intended not only for Software, but also for creative works of all kinds.
License Zero
2017
- Parity license https://paritylicense.com/versions/7.0.0
- Prosperity Public license https://prosperitylicense.com/versions/3.0.0
- License Zero Private License https://licensezero.com/licenses/private
Contributors can choose from two software licenses, Parity, an open, share-alike license, and Prosperity, noncommercial license, then sell private licenses through licensezero.com for use in closed source or for profit. licensezero.com sends the proceeds directly to developers’ Stripe accounts.
Anti-Fascist MIT License
2018
https://github.com/jamiebuilds/anti-fascist-mit-license
I love Open Source, and I want to give my software away to as many people as possible. However, I refuse to let my work benefit those who support fascism.
BOLA license
2007
https://blitiri.com.ar/p/bola/
Buena Onda License Agreement. In spanish, "Buena onda" means something like "cool" or "nice". "Bola" is a spanish word too, and means "ball". Just to be clear, I am NOT a lawyer and I don't want to have anything to do with them. Use it at your own risk. If nightmares about lawyers keep you up at night, stay away from it.
Hippocratic License
2019
https://firstdonoharm.dev/version/2/1/license.html
For too long, we as software developers have divorced ourselves from the consequences of the code that we write. We have told ourselves that development is a pure and abstract pursuit, and have spent our careers writing programs with the goals of clarity, conciseness, readability, performance, and elegance.
But we are starting to realize that the software that we create has a real and lasting impact on the world in which we live.
Introducing the *Hippocratic License*: an Ethical Source license that specifically prohibits the use of software to violate universal standards of human rights, and embodying the principles of Ethical Source Software.
"Anti 996" License Version 1.0 (Draft)
2019
https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/LICENSE, https://996.icu/#/en_US
A "996" work schedule refers to an unofficial work schedule (9 a.m.–9 p.m., 6 days per week) that has been gaining popularity. Serving a company that encourages the "996" work schedule usually means working for at least 60 hours per week.
Atmosphere Software License (🚪🌳🔌⛅🛂💸)
2019
https://web.archive.org/web/20200518052657/https://www.open-austin.org/atmosphere-license/
The purpose of the Atmosphere License is to let developers push back against this cycle, supporting environmental sustainabiliy by creating code that increases the relative economic value of renewable energy.
🚩 The Anti-Capitalist Software License
2020
https://anticapitalist.software
The *Anti-Capitalist Software License* (ACSL) is a software license towards a world beyond capitalism. This license exists to release software that empowers individuals, collectives, worker-owned cooperatives, and nonprofits, while denying usage to those that exploit labor for profit.
By Ramsey Nasser & Everest Pipkin.
Past versions archived here.
Do No Harm License
2017
https://github.com/raisely/NoHarm/blob/publish/LICENSE.md
Most software today is developed with little to no thought of how it will be used, or the consequences for our society and planet.
The Vaccine License - A Software License That Saves Lives
2019
Open Source developers should work for good, not evil. The misguided rejection of vaccination is one of the greatest evils that has ever existed.
The *Vaccine License* is a software license that requires that users vaccinate their children, and themselves, and that user businesses make a similar requirement of their employees, to the greatest extent legally possible. The required vaccinations are those recommended by the user’s national administration, for example the United States Center for Disease Control. There is an exception for those who, for medical reasons, should not receive a vaccine.
Copy Far "AI"
https://copyfarai.itcouldbewor.se/
"Copy Far 'AI' - A license close to copyleft, but far from the so-called 'Artificial Intelligences'."
more...
- Selection of Proto-Free Culture Licenses: https://www.bleu255.com/~aymeric/dump/aymeric_mansoux-sandbox_culture_phd_thesis-2017.pdf#page=924
Readings, podcasts, video
A Guide to Open Content Licenses
Guide to Open Content Licenses was written in 2004, revised in 2005 by Lawrence Liang as part of the early Piet Zwart Institute Research program (at the start of the Media Design, pre-cursor to XPUB, course). It's dated, but a useful document.
Also referenced here: https://monoskop.org/Lawrence_Liang
Collective Conditions, by Constant
This reader is an evolving companion to Collective Conditions, a worksession held in November 2019 in Brussels. Together with a group of 25 international participants we explored the generative potential of socio-technical protocols such as codes of conduct, complaint procedures, bug reports and copyleft licenses. Collective Conditions was activated by the work of trans*feminist collectives on ally-ship, non-violent communication, score-making, anti-colonial and intersectional activism, but also by ways of doing developed within Free Culture and Free, Libre and Open Source software. Out of commitment to the tools and methods that these collectives propose to intervene in cultures of harassment, we wanted to take serious the role that self-invented protocols might play in the (different) imagination of “complex collectivities”.
https://constantvzw.org/wefts/ccreader.en.html
https://constantvzw.org/collectiveconditions/reader.pdf
Sandbox Culture: A Study of the Application of Free and Open Source Software Licensing Ideas to Art and Cultural Production
Aymeric's PhD thesis on paradoxes, conflicts, and contradictions within free culture discourse. Published in 2017.
https://monoskop.org/log/?p=18777
The Rising Ethical Storm In Open Source
Recording of a presentation by Coraline Ada Ehmke on ethical open licenses.
Presented at CopyleftConf 2020.
https://archive.org/details/copyleftconf2020-ehmke
The blog post that Ehmke refers to in her presentation by Bruce Perens, in which he critiques the Hippocratic License: https://perens.com/2019/09/23/sorry-ms-ehmke-the-hippocratic-license-cant-work/
CCinContext
An article on different open licenses written by Nicolas Malevé in 2006, published at [www.stormy-weather.be/wiki/index.php/CCinContext stormy-Weather.be].
https://constantvzw.org/verlag/spip.php?article82#
Artists & Hackers podcast episode with Local Context
In today’s episode, we’re looking at issues that come up in Indigenous communities, and one initiative to respond to the limitations of the law and to reassert cultural authority in one’s own heritage, culture and data.
https://artistsandhackers.podbean.com/e/intellectual-property-and-indigenous-heritage/
Events, initiatives, projects
All Wrongs Reversed™
Workshop organised by Spookstad (Amsterdam), with Aymeric Mansoux.
15 February 2024
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/XMp+7guvylz5IvMMsWbxqclOjS32Nn8uUZGrUlB0wn0/
Reading Group, Limits to Openness
An online reading group that has been active in 2023 to explore the “Limits to Openness”, initiated by Femke Snelting and Eva Weinmayr.
“We” is Femke Snelting and Eva Weinmayr –– working on a 2-year project “Ecologies of Dissemination, decolonial knowledge practice, feminist methodology, open access”. From a commitment to sharing and re-use – beyond conventional copyright – we are trying to come to terms with issues of universalism related to the idea of “openness”, as often presented in Open Content, Open Access, Free Culture and so forth. Does Free Culture perversely repeat here the colonial gesture of creating a ground zero for the circulation of knowledge as a “Free” object? What could decolonial, feminist conditions for re-use look like, that would acknowledge entangled notions of authorship?
https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/gVONhpg3GHaXufOn8jAsoRgI/
More information about the research project that this reading group is part of: http://evaweinmayr.com/work/ecologies-of-dissemination-decolonial-knowledge-practice-feminist-methodology-open-access/
Authors of the future: Re-imagining Copyleft
A studyday organised by Constant around open license practices.
Friday 27 September 2019 from 10:00 to 18:00.
@ ISELP, Institut Supérieur pour l’Étude du Langage Plastique (Bruxelles)
https://constantvzw.org/site/Authors-of-the-future-Re-imagining-Copyleft.html
Public domain day
A series of activities that celebrated yearly the importance of the Public Domain.
In Brussels, the Public Domain Day was celebrated by a yearly event that was organised by Constant, CRIDS (Centre de Recherche Informatique et Droit, FUNDP Namur), Cinema Nova and the Royal Library of Belgium.
https://constantvzw.org/site/-Public-Domain-Day,178-.html
See also
- https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/MediaWiki:Licenses - list of licenses that can be selected when you upload a file on this wiki
- https://ethicalsource.dev/licenses/
- https://github.com/LibreCybernetics/awesome-copyfarleft/
- Open licenses session, 5 March 2024, as part of a prototyping session during Special Issue 23: Quilting infrastructures