Re: Biological data being used by an unpublished research paper is considered proprietary
> On Mon, 16 Sep 2013, Peter Rice wrote:
>
> >However, I have run into this issue before in the context of
> >biological database entries and Debian so it may be worth discussing
> >here. There were objections to including SwissProt entries in the
> >example data for the EMBOSS package because the licensing of
> >SwissProt does not allow them to be edited. That was resolved by
> >agreeing that scientific facts should not be edited so that the
> >files could be accepted as part of a Debian package even though they
> >could not be changed. A fine compromise I feel.
Le Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 01:50:48AM +0530, Faheem Mitha a écrit :
>
> So, what license did these files go into Debian as?
Hello Faheem and Peter,
the license page of the UniProt consortium now underlines that the CC-ND
license applies only to the copyrightable parts of its databases.
We have chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License to
all copyrightable parts of our databases. This means that you are free to copy,
distribute, display and make commercial use of these databases in all
legislations, provided you give us credit. However, if you intend to distribute
a modified version of one of our databases, you must ask us for permission
first.
http://www.uniprot.org/help/license
Since facts can not be copyrighted, I think that the current consensus within
Debian is that the copyright statements in the records apply to the whole
database and not to the records taken in isolation. This means that in theory,
the copyright law does not forbid changing the sequence in individual records
distributed separately from the database. In practice, there may be other
reasons, and I would list ethics on the top of the list, to not do so in a
misleading way.
Have a nice day,
Charles
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
Reply to: