PLEP-0004 – Licensing of PlasmaPy Repositories

The purpose of this PlasmaPy Enhancement Proposal (PLEP) is to clarify the licensing practices of PlasmaPy repositories. Source code files, code snippets, and associated documentation shall in general be covered by a BSD 3-clause license with an explicit patent grant. Other creative works shall in general be covered by the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. If back and forth collaboration with a body of work released under a copyleft license [e.g., the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0) license] is desirable, then a PlasmaPy repository may be licensed under one or more compatible copyleft licenses. When PlasmaPy adopts or incorporates an existing body of creative works released under an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license or a Creative Commons license, then that body of work and its derivatives may continue to use that license. PlasmaPy’s Coordinating Committee may make exceptions to this policy when there are extenuating circumstances.