Discussion: prose license — CC-BY-4.0 vs CC-BY-SA-4.0 as QuantEcon default

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Review the proposal, QuantEcon/meta#301, and QuantEcon/book-dp1 PR #336 to understand the current licensing context and pending publication work. Compare the two license options with the team, reach a documented default or per-project policy, and record the decision in the QuantEcon contributor/style guide.

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Description

Summary

Across QuantEcon publications we use a mix of Creative Commons licenses for prose/lecture content. This issue is for the team to compare CC-BY-4.0 and CC-BY-SA-4.0 and converge on a default for new long-form publications (starting with the DP book series being prepared for web publication, see #301).

Current default for new DP books (as a placeholder): CC-BY-SA-4.0, matching the Python lectures.

Comparison

Dimension CC-BY-4.0 CC-BY-SA-4.0
Attribution required ✅ ✅
Commercial reuse ✅ ✅
Modifications/derivatives ✅ ✅
Derivatives must be released under the same license ❌ ✅ ("share-alike")
Used by Python lectures (current) — ✅
Used by numpy, scipy docs ✅ (CC-BY-style for docs) —
Compatible with most permissive textbook reuse ✅ ⚠️ (SA-clause restricts incorporation into proprietary or differently-licensed works)
AI training friendliness ✅ both — both permit indexing/training with attribution. SA imposes downstream-licensing constraints on derivative outputs if they are themselves redistributed.

Considerations

For CC-BY:

  • Maximises downstream reuse — anyone can incorporate excerpts into other works (textbooks, courses, blog posts, even commercial training material) without re-licensing.
  • Preferred by some open-textbook initiatives (OpenStax, MIT OCW Press) for exactly this reason.
  • Cleaner story for AI training datasets — no viral clause to reason about.

For CC-BY-SA:

  • Ensures the commons stays open — derivative works that redistribute substantial portions must remain CC-BY-SA.
  • Consistent with our Python lectures (already SA-licensed).
  • Wikipedia uses CC-BY-SA; familiar pattern.

Proposal for discussion

  1. Confirm whether we want a single default across QuantEcon long-form content, or allow per-project choice.
  2. If single default: CC-BY-4.0 (most permissive) or CC-BY-SA-4.0 (status quo for Python lectures)?
  3. Document the chosen default in a QuantEcon contributor/style guide.

Context

  • QuantEcon/book-dp1 PR #336 is converting DP Vol I to MyST + web publication. It currently ships with CC-BY-SA-4.0 (the Python lectures default) pending this discussion.
  • Related: QuantEcon/meta#301 (publish DP books + AI training discoverability).

cc @jstac

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