New documentation on DM's licensing and copyright practices

Data Management DM Notifications
#1

Today in the DM Developer Guide you’ll find a few new pages that describe how to manage licenses and copyrights in DM’s open source projects. This content isn’t entirely new—we’ve lifted it out of another page that we’re about to replace—but we’ve also expanded its scope. If you have any questions about how to set copyrights or licenses, please take a moment to review these docs.

For Stack developers

Most of us work on some part of the DM Stack, which is a GPL-3.0-licensed project. We’ve created a one-page overview of how licensing and copyrights work in packages:

Managing license and copyright in Stack packages

This documentation follows the practices adopted in RFC-45, which is different from how we’ve traditionally asserted copyright and licensing in packages. I’m not aware of how individual DM teams are managing this transition, but in general, developers can transition their packages to this new, more efficient style immediately.

Additional details

We’ve also created a new section in the Developer Guide called “Legal” to document policy on open source licensing and copyright and how to apply these concepts:

Bonus: directory-based Git configuration

We’ve also updated the Git settings page to mention directory-based conditional Git configuration. This is a great way to have Git use your institutional email address for commits whenever you’re working on LSST projects.

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#2

You can test that it’s working properly by issuing git config user.email in a directory and checking the expected email address is returned.

#3

Sorry, I’m a bit confused. Has the policy on, e.g., COPYRIGHT files changed from what used to be in “Documenting Stack Packages”, or is this just a reorganization of the existing text?

#4

This is primarily a reorganization since the “Documenting Stack Packages” page will be replaced soon.

We realized that the previous content had never been announced, hence the announcement now.

The Licensing LSST DM source code and content also has new information on open source licensing in general, but this is primarily intended for those who work outside the Stack.

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