Creative Commons 4.0

LiborA

Styles are published under Creative Commons license version 3.0. Now is it available CC license in version 4.0 but Style requirements (https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/wiki/Style-Requirements) strictly prescribes Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Is CC version 4.0 acceptable or not?

Rintze

It's easier to just have a single license for the entire repository, so for now I would like to stay with CC BY-SA 3.0.

I'm not a lawyer, but https://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses/ and https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/4.0_upgrade_guidelines#Upgrading_from_prior_versions_to_4.0 suggest that, at least officially, we would need permission from all past contributors to upgrade all styles to CC BY-SA 4.0, which would be very hard to obtain. Although I doubt anybody will object if we just announce (e.g. on the xbiblio-dev mailing and our Twitter account) that we will upgrade the license at some point to 4.0, as long as nobody objects to that.

We could also state in our contribution guidelines that we reserve the right to upgrade the license of styles to newer versions of the CC BY-SA license, although that wouldn't really help with the existing styles.

[I raised the same issue in 2013 at http://xbiblio-devel.2463403.n2.nabble.com/Rights-Authorship-of-Dependent-Styles-tp6373252p7578849.html . In that post, I wrongly conclude that we are free to upgrade, which I think only holds for new contributions to existing content, not the original content itself.]

matejovo

I have legal question about CSL... Is it legal use styles from CSL repository (https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles) without referencing to CitationStyles.org? I am not sure if it is obligatory or not.

adamsmith

We can't give legal advice, but according to my understanding of the license, you do need to credit the styles' creators (we're not sure whether automated styles can be copyrighted at all, though).

We _ask_ that you credit citationstyles.org, (and using citeproc-js, I believe has that as a license requirement), but technically speaking I don't think you'd be legally obligated to.

Rintze

Is it legal use styles from CSL repository ... without referencing to CitationStyles.org?

I wrote what I think are reasonable and CC BY-SA compatible license requirements in https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/blob/master/README.md#licensing:

All the styles in this repository are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. For attribution, any software using CSL styles from this repository must include a clear mention of the CSL project and a link to CitationStyles.org. When distributing these styles, the listings of authors and contributors in the style metadata must be kept as is.

If you're an end-user, you can just use the styles and modify them as you like. If you redistribute the repository styles (modified or unmodified), you must observe the CC BY-SA license and maintain some attribution to the original styles (instead of keeping authors and contributors, a CSL "template" link can also suffice), and use a compatible license. If you use CSL in your software, we request that you acknowledge this (in a way that is accessible to the end-user, like the "About" section), but this is probably more of a courtesy request than a legal requirement.

matejovo

Thank you for you fast answer.
I am not planing use CSL styles in any software. But our university also others in Czech rep. buy some software, where are used styles form CSL project. But I have never seen link (reference) to CSL...

Other thing is CC says "you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original" Does It mean, that if someone modify CSL styles It obligatory use same license??

I have this question, because in "The software" (what our university bought) is created style by faculty requirements based on some public CSL style. But it is not possible download it and use it in another software, also request for .csl file was not successful.
They are producing close software and protect it by Copyright if
benefiting form open CSL project without referencing.

adamsmith

Other thing is CC says "you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original" Does It mean, that if someone modify CSL styles It obligatory use same license??

That's what the license means, yes. Again, we don't know if this is legally enforceable -- though I think it probably would be, at least in the US.
But anyway, we're not in the business of suing people, but often a friendly e-mail is all that's needed to, at a minimum, get some type of acknowledgement.

Do you mind telling us which software that is? If you don't want to post it here, you can use the contact form here (which goes to Rintze's e-mail): http://citationstyles.org/contact/

matejovo

I can write it here, It is institutional edition (citacePRO) of citace.com
https://www.citacepro.com/

matejovo

you can try 7 days trial https://www.citacepro.com/registrace

Rintze

Thanks. I left a note on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10154177147175116&id=181700580115. Let's see if they get back to us.

I did find one mention of CSL at http://www.citace.com/citace-pro ("Na vyžádání jsme schopni doplnit i další citační styly nebo si je můžete sami vytvořit přes CSL editor.").

matejovo

It means, "you can request us for any other style, or you can create it yourself in CSL editor".

LiborA

It seems that citacepro.com do not use a current version of styles. Style for Vodohospodářské technicko-ekonomické informace journal is a little bit outdated :-) I completely changed it last weekend but on the citacepro.com is the style from 2015-01-17 based on author-date style (new style template use numeric style).

Rintze

Citace now clearly mentions CSL and provides a link to citationstyles.org on their Citace PRO product page. Thanks @matejovo for letting us know! (they said they use citeproc-php as the CSL processor)

@LiborA, they said their styles were only one week out of date, but they should have the latest version of your style now.