On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 2:57 PM, John Chilton <chilton@msi.umn.edu> wrote:
I don't have time to argue about this especially because I agree that cc is likely better than OSS licenses, but I am just too passionate about this point not too. Workflows are 100% software!!!
I think we agree here - although I want workflows in Galaxy to be a bit broader than just the scripted actions and include help text and sample data as well (which should also happen with software in general): http://lists.bx.psu.edu/pipermail/galaxy-dev/2013-August/016132.html http://lists.bx.psu.edu/pipermail/galaxy-dev/2013-August/016133.html
A python script is just a protocol or a cookbook that tells a Python interpreter (runtime) how to behave. Even assembly is just a set of bits without a machine to run it on.
You would never tell a biologist this, but Galaxy is a high-level graphical programming environment, histories are an interactive console for testing and debugging, workflows are finished programs that can be rerun using the same runtime on different inputs.
-John
So yes, we could indeed use traditional software licenses (open source or otherwise) for workflows. I've been using the MIT license on most of my recent Galaxy Tools, which is extremely liberal - so if I used that on workflows it would of course allow editing etc, and should be OK for combining with other workflows too. I don't want to accidentally block reuse of my workflows due to a too narrow license. Peter