[REUSE] Handle copyright and licensing of snippets

[Matija Šuklje]

On četrtek, 05. marec 2020 13:46:01 CET, Gustafsson, Stefan wrote:
>
> P.S. Slightly unrelated to the how-to-mark-snippets-topic: in 
> the example you chose, one could argue that copying a snippet of 
> code under CC-BY-SA-4.0 into an Apache-2.0 licensed file/project 
> could make that whole file/project a "Adapted Material" in the 
> spirit and letter of CC-BY-SA-4.0, and hence the whole 
> file/project would need to be licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0 
> (Section 3.b) or a BY-SA Compatible License - so no need 
> bothering marking the snippet anymore 😉 

Sure, but that is just one example (not uncommon, as AFAIR StackOverflow 
uses CC-BY-SA¹), and there are other – perhaps even incompatible – sets of 
licenses one could take as an example. Do you have a better suggestion?

In any case, since we are talking about source code, the fact that a 
snippet is differently licensed from the majority of the code still 
somewhat similar to including a differently licensed library or copy a file 
into the codebase. So, one can still fix the potential incompatibility (or 
avoid certain obligations) by removing that portion of the code and 
replacing it with one that is compatible, without major harm. As long as 
all files and snippets have their licensing info clearly attached to them, 
you can fix anything that needs fixing.

Following your example, CC-BY-SA-4.0 might apply to the whole file, but 
what happens if someone later removes that snippet. If the person before 
them simply changed the license of the whole file to CC-BY-SA-4.0, then one 
would assume the file would continue to be under that license (instead of 
Apache-2.0, which would be more logical).

In addition, I would argue that the rest of the file remains under 
Apache-2.0 even if a CC-BY-SA-4.0 snippet was embedded into it. That is the 
licensing situation of the code. It is only in the next step when we look 
into the specific obligations each license (and piece of code) demands. 
Only then we decide that CC-BY-SA-4.0 is the common denominator² of both 
CC-BY-SA-4.0 and Apache-2.0, and that it is that license which applies to 
the new work as a whole (while parts of the work are still licensed as they 
are).

Now, if this was binary-only, things might have been different³.


cheers,
Matija
—
1	https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service#licensing

2	Although another common denominator could be GPL-3.0-only.

3	C.f. adplumbatio vs ferruminatio
	https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/RE:Adplumbatio
	https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/318772
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