License → redistribution-policy table (shared decision for the licensing principle)

[jmchilton]

Filed by Claude (AI assistant) on jmchilton's behalf — not authored by them personally.

License → redistribution-policy table

Proposed shared decision backing the new guiding principle Redistributed Content Carries Its License (#3). This table is the one piece of logic the two instances (workflow foundry, statistical-genomics foundry) must keep identical even though they share no UI/code layer: it maps a normalized license ID to whether the Foundry may carry the source verbatim into a cast artifact or must carry it own-words only, and what obligations ride along.

It assumes the enum-plus-escape-hatch decision: license is an SPDX identifier, or a LicenseRef-<slug> custom ref for anything not in SPDX. Free-text license strings are migrated to IDs first; this table is what the IDs then mean.

Engineering policy, not legal advice. The rows encode the discipline this project chooses; genuinely novel or high-stakes licenses should get real review before verbatim redistribution.

The table

SPDX / Ref ID	License	Redistribution policy	Casting transform	Obligations if carried	license_file
MIT	MIT	verbatim-ok	verbatim or condensed	attribution + license notice	required
Apache-2.0	Apache 2.0	verbatim-ok	verbatim or condensed	attribution + notice + preserve NOTICE	required
BSD-2-Clause	BSD 2-Clause	verbatim-ok	verbatim or condensed	attribution + notice	required
BSD-3-Clause	BSD 3-Clause	verbatim-ok	verbatim or condensed	attribution + notice + no-endorsement	required
AFL-3.0	Academic Free License 3.0	verbatim-ok	verbatim or condensed	attribution + notice	required
CC-BY-4.0	CC BY 4.0	verbatim-ok	verbatim or condensed	attribution (title/author/source/license/changes)	required
GPL-2.0-only GPL-3.0-only	GPL	verbatim-ok ⚠ copyleft	verbatim only	notice + same-license + source availability; isolate in its own file, do not blend into permissively-licensed prose	required
LGPL-3.0-or-later	LGPL	verbatim-ok ⚠ copyleft	verbatim only	notice + LGPL terms; isolate as above	required
CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0 (and *-NC-*, *-SA-* family)	CC BY-NC-SA 2.0	own-words-only (policy)	condensed / own-words	attribution + citation; verbatim carry avoided so NC + share-alike don't propagate into the KB	not required
LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-distrib-1.0	arXiv non-exclusive distribution 1.0	own-words-only	own-words	citation; arXiv's grant does not give third parties a redistribution right	not required
LicenseRef-all-rights-reserved	All rights reserved / read-only manuscript (e.g. NIH-PA on PMC)	own-words-only	own-words	citation only	not required
(unresolved / missing)	—	own-words-only + defect	own-words	must be resolved to a real ID before any verbatim carry	—

Global rules (apply across all rows)

1. Functional-strings carve-out. Equations, parameter names, API/function/package names, numeric thresholds, and enum values are reproduced verbatim as facts regardless of the row's policy — facts and short functional identifiers are not copyrightable expression. "own-words-only" constrains prose, never the facts.
2. Default-deny. A source with no resolved license ID is treated as own-words-only; asking casting to carry a verbatim / redistributed reference without a license ID is a build error, not a warning.
3. own-words is not a copyleft launder. Paraphrasing covers expression; it does not touch the underlying ideas/facts (which are free to use anyway). Do not use own-words to sidestep copyleft — for GPL/LGPL, either carry verbatim-with-license or don't carry it. The gray zone isn't worth it.
4. license_file tracks verbatim carry. Required whenever content is carried verbatim (Tier: permissive + CC-BY + copyleft); not required for own-words-only sources (no text is being redistributed), which instead must carry a citation/attribution.
5. The Foundry's own content is out of scope. This table governs third-party content the Foundry passes through. The Foundry's authored notes are covered by the root project license and are never conflated with passed-through material.

How casting uses it

The row's Casting transform column is the enforcement hook: a reference's transform mode (verbatim vs condensed) must be compatible with its license row. Casting refuses a verbatim transform on an own-words-only license. This is what turns the principle from advice into an enforced check, and it reuses the transform-mode field Molds already carry.

Open questions

1. CC-BY-NC-SA: verbatim redistribution is permitted non-commercially with share-alike, but the table recommends own-words-only to keep the KB uniformly licensed and avoid NC/SA propagation. Confirm — stat-gen already treats the MSMB textbook (CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0) as own-words, so this matches current practice. Keep as policy, or allow opt-in verbatim under NC?
2. Copyleft at all? Do we permit GPL/LGPL content in a cast artifact given license-contamination of the otherwise-permissive output, or downgrade GPL to own-words + cite only? Current call: allow verbatim, isolated in its own file with its license.
3. Enum maintenance: curated enum (extend as new licenses appear) vs validate against the full SPDX license list. Curated + LicenseRef- escape is the pragmatic default.
4. Canonical home + sync: where does this table live authoritatively, and how do the two repos stay in sync — hand-copied data file with a pointer comment in each, or a shared package later? Drift here means the principle means different things in each instance, so changes should be flagged in both repos' review.

Follow-ups this unblocks (tracked separately, per-repo)

• Schema: enum + LicenseRef- escape in meta_schema.yml (workflow) and content.config.ts (stat-gen).
• license / license_file into _provenance.json (workflow now; stat-gen when its cast layer lands).
• Foreground licenses in the workflow foundry UI (build the renderer; crib stat-gen's SourceMeta.astro + lib/licenses.ts as reference).
• Tag vendored_upstreams.yml entries with license at sync time.
• principles-in-action.md needs an 8th concrete incarnation once instance application is decided.