Licences

An creative work (including code) without a licence is exclusively copyrighted to the creator by default. This implies that no one can use/modify/copy/distribute the work.

In research terms this means:

• that if you put code online as part of your research, if you do not accompany it with a licence then no one is allowed to use it.
• that if you find code online that does not have a licence, you are not allowed to use it.

In practice this simply means that you should add a LICENCE.md file to your repositories that say if you are happy to let people use your work. Similarly, if you would like to use something that doesn't have a licence you can always get in touch with the author and ask them to add a licence.

A very popular licence in research software is the MIT licence which is very permissive: it essentially tells people they are free to use the software as they wish long as they attribute you and don't hold you liable. You can see the licence for these course materials here: github.com/drvinceknight/rsd/blob/master/LICENSE

There are many other standard licences and various resources for learning about them:

• choosealicense.com/no-license/
• blog.codinghorror.com/pick-a-license-any-license/
• choosealicense.com
• help.github.com/articles/licensing-a-repository/