All you need to know about Software Licenses as a RSE

Abstract

A basic understanding of software licenses and related topics is necessary for RSEs to successfully publish their research software from the legal point of view. Typical questions are: What license should I use for code, documentation, or data? Can I combine this specific set of software licenses? How to document this information?

This talk gives an overview about the copyright and software license basics. Using an example of a data analysis script written in Python, we go through the process of clarifying all relevant aspects and documenting them in a practical way. In this context, we introduce REUSE SOFTWARE which provides a standardized approach to document copyright and license information as well as helpful tools.