[cellml-discussion] Terms of use for CellML models and associated content hosted on models.cellml.org

Thu Dec 3 08:57:49 NZDT 2009

Dear Allyson and Hans

Thank you for your thoughts on this topic...  I'll add your comments  
to the tracker item to keep all the information in one place, and I  
will raise this issue again at next week's CellML meeting to keep the  
momentum going and hopefully come to a solution in the not too distant  
future!

Best wishes
Catherine

On 3/12/2009, at 12:54 AM, Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser wrote:

>
> Hi!
>
> You may want to look at work in licensing by Victoria Stodden, see
>
> http://www.stanford.edu/~vcs/
>
> Best,
> Hans
>
> Allyson Lister wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> This is an interesting point - thanks for bringing it to the  
>> community,
>> Catherine!
>>
>> Though I am not a developer of CellML models, but rather a user of  
>> them
>> (in the bioinformatics, data integration sense), I have a few  
>> points to
>> make that might help this discussion. I have spent a lot of time
>> thinking about licensing with respect to ontologies, which are  
>> similar
>> beasts in terms of licensing, IMHO.
>>
>> Firstly: the distinction between /attribution/ and /citation/. At the
>> risk of tooting my own horn, me and a colleague Frank Gibson have
>> written about this in the context of the life sciences here:
>> http://themindwobbles.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/attribution-vs-citation-do-you-know-the-difference/
>> . Basically, what I would like people to get from this point is  
>> that you
>> need to carefully define what the goal is that you want to achieve  
>> with
>> the terms of model distribution.
>>
>> Secondly: licensing (which guarantees attribution, but not  
>> necessarily
>> citation). The most common requirement mentioned in the links below  
>> is
>> attribution. Some have suggested GPL, others the CC-BY license. I  
>> would
>> like to suggest that you do NOT use GPL. Although the name "viral"  
>> may
>> be misleading, it is true that if a 3rd party wants to use your
>> GPL-licensed models, that if you create a software program that /is a
>> derived work of another software program, then that combined work  
>> must
>> be distributed under these terms/. This means that you are  
>> restricting
>> everyone down the line to using GPL. I would suggest a variant of the
>> Creative Commons license, such as CC-BY. However, Creative Commons is
>> explictly NOT designed for software. Here, you run into the same  
>> problem
>> I had with figuring out a license for ontologies: are ontologies -  
>> and
>> models - software or documents? It is my impression (and one that  
>> seems
>> to be backed up by the Science Commons folks) that these are indeed
>> documents, and would be suitable for CC. CC allows you to choose a
>> license that isn't defined by any particular country. CC-BY forces
>> attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) while CC- 
>> BY-SA
>> (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) enforces attribution
>> and for people to use similar, compatible (but not identical)  
>> licensing.
>> (btw, it seems the BioModels terms of use are here, and might be  
>> worth a
>> read: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/biomodels-main/termsofuse)
>>
>> Thirdly: attribution stacking. While it is a good idea (it's what I  
>> do)
>> to require attribution in your license, because CellML models may be
>> incorporated one into another into another into another etc, you  
>> may get
>> the situation very quickly where it becomes rather unwieldy to ensure
>> everything has been attributed properly. Conversely, if each model  
>> gets
>> the attribution right each time, it may not be such a high wall to  
>> climb
>> after all. The Science Commons people have something to say about  
>> this
>> in general:
>> http://themindwobbles.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/science-commons-provide-a-list-of-considerations-for-researchers-looking-to-license-their-ontology/
>> . The link I provide here is about ontologies, but the broad points
>> remain important.
>>
>> Finally, do you want links to the other model URIs, or to the DOIs of
>> the papers they're described in? I'm guessing the former, as  
>> perhaps the
>> latter will be included in the model's metadata anyway? However,  
>> model
>> authors may be more keen, in terms of # of citations being an  
>> important
>> metric, to see a DOI put in instead. Not sure, would have to ask the
>> modellers themselves.
>>
>> Hope this helps, and sorry for the length - I didn't intend it to  
>> be so
>> long when I started!
>>
>> :) allyson
>>
>> 2009/12/1 Catherine Lloyd <c.lloyd at auckland.ac.nz
>> <mailto:c.lloyd at auckland.ac.nz>>
>>
>>    Dear All
>>
>>    We are looking towards using the MIRIAM Standard for the basic set
>>    of CellML model curation flags.  In order to do this we need to
>>    consider how we are going to address the following point:
>>
>>    "Is the model linked to a precise statement about the terms of
>>    distribution?"
>>
>>    This issue has been raised at an Auckland CellML team meeting:
>>
>>    http://www.cellml.org/community/meeting/minutes/2009/11.25
>>
>>    And it has also been discussed (briefly) on the Physiome tracker:
>>
>>    https://tracker.physiomeproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2056
>>
>>    Before we come up with a definite solution to this problem we  
>> would
>>    like to open up the discussion further and invite the community to
>>    add any comments they might have to this tracker item.
>>
>>    Thank you in advance for your thoughts and ideas!
>>
>>    Best wishes
>>    Catherine
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Allyson Lister
>> http://themindwobbles.wordpress.com
>>
>> CISBAN, http://www.cisban.ac.uk
>> Newcastle University
>>
>
> -- 
> Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser
> Associate Professor
>
> Dept. of Mathematical Sciences and Technology
> Norwegian University of Life Sciences
>
> Phone +47 6496 5467
> Fax   +47 6496 5401
> Email hans.ekkehard.plesser at umb.no
> Home  http://arken.umb.no/~plesser
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