Add license for text and code contributions

[bkmgit]

Problem

MPI Standards should have a text and code license

Proposal

Obtain agreement from forum and previous contributors on text and code licenses

Changes to the Text

License information would be added to the text

Impact on Implementations

Legal protection when using material from the standard

Impact on Users

Legal protection whe using material from the standard

References and Pull Requests

As an example IETF has a holding body so that it can redistribute RFCs https://trustee.ietf.org/wp-content/uploads/RFC_Author_License.pdf

Code is usually under a Revised BSD license:https://trustee.ietf.org/assets/licenses/license-for-open-source-repositories/

Mulan PSL2 has a patent protection clause that maybe useful.

Would be good to compare with other programming related standards.

[jeffhammond]

We discussed this in Portland in 2017 or 2018. We need a solution that addresses historical contributions. This is a steering committee issue.

[bkmgit]

People who have made previous contributions would need to agree to re-licensing and assigning their copyright. - Was there a suggestion of what licenses to use from previous discussion? - Should people be able to use portions of the text? - May want to ensure that only official versions are referred to as "the MPI Standard".

[devreal]

This is a steering committee issue.

We need a steering committee :)

Would be good to compare with other programming related standards.

Here is what the OpenMP standard says:

Copyright (c) 1997-2021 OpenMP Architecture Review Board.
Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted, provided the OpenMP
Architecture Review Board copyright notice and the title of this document appear. Notice is
given that copying is by permission of the OpenMP Architecture Review Board.

[jeffhammond]

https://www.mpi-forum.org/

Steering Committee

• Jack Dongarra
• Al Geist
• Richard Graham
• Bill Gropp
• Andrew Lumsdaine
• Ewing Lusk
• Rolf Rabenseifner