Project foundations matter. A project's priority should be to build infrastructure.
But rushed infrastructure often neglects licensing. The Debian wiki is a sadly great example of how even a highly licensing-aware project failing to specify a license on day 1 can remain a mess decades later. If a precious but unlicensed wiki page has contributions from someone who disappeared, can you integrate it in the product?
The Real™ prevention from these headaches, appropriation and forkability concerns is making a (default) license opt-out or mandatory on all contents, including documentation, websites, issue reports and discussions.
But if you're late or contributing to a project struggling to agree on a license, you can at least avoid worsening matters yourself by adding a notice to your own contributions.
License notices
You can copy the following notices to each “page” you contribute to, or link to the relevant one. The following anchor names are guaranteed stable:
- https://www.philippecloutier.com/Common+infrastructure+licensing#review
- https://www.philippecloutier.com/Common+infrastructure+licensing#forum
- https://www.philippecloutier.com/Common+infrastructure+licensing#its
The following license notices may evolve. As a developer, if you are concerned about evolution, you may use the page history to link to a particular version of this page. As a content reuser, you need not worry about losing any right (the grant is perpetual).
Code review
Forum topic/thread
All myWhen a contributor links to this section, “my contributions” means those made by that contributor. contributions to this topic, including attachments, are offered under the terms of the CC0 1.0 Universal public license, unless otherwise indicated, with the exception of:
- attachments with a copyright notice
- screenshots which embed non-original images (such as software logos/icons).
Ticket / issue report
All myWhen a contributor links to this section, “my contributions” means those made by that contributor. contributions to this issue report (ticket), including comments (and any inline patch) and attachments, are offered under the terms of the CC0 1.0 Universal public license, unless otherwise indicated, with the exception of:
- attachments with a copyright notice
- screenshots which embed non-original images (such as software logos/icons).