Hi Sebastian, Thanks for your thoughts. As to the details, I guess most people agree that Galaxy Tool wrappers are software, although they range from trivial XML markup files, to complex XML with embedded scripting, to some with a second script file working with the XML. Galaxy Workflows are recorded (currently) as plain text JSON files, which can be edited by hand but are best created and edited via the Galaxy interface. In both cases there can or should be test and sample data, http://lists.bx.psu.edu/pipermail/galaxy-dev/2013-August/016133.html John Chilton replied via twitter, "Workflows are software (written in a high-level language), but somehow OS licenses feel incorrect - paper citations seem the goal." https://twitter.com/jmchilton/status/369643138911961088 I guess we as a community could go down either route for licensing Galaxy workflows - but it might make sense to have a consensus as that would simplify combining workflows together and redistributing the resulting super workflow. Perhaps if we'll be able to use Galaxy Workflows like Galaxy Tools within the interface one day it would be better to treat them all under software licenses? Peter On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 11:21 PM, Sebastian Schaaf <schaaf@ibe.med.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
Hello Peter,
First of all, interesting question :). Generally, I would suppose both approaches are correct: on the one hand those workflows are a defined set of processing rules in an explicit format, like software is the implementation of algorithms. More detailed, it is a script, processed by an interpreter (= Galaxy). On the other hand, those rules are on a more or less abstract level (does that matter?) and carry somewhat creativity (well, just the uplink to *Creative* Commons...).
I would redirect your question to the counter question "How similar is the saved workflow to software code?". Means: is there a file or a database entry, which is comparable to an (interpreted) programming language (-> software)? Or is it more similar to a markup language like XML, which is indeed the case for some other basic elements in Galaxy (-> document)?
Hope that helps...
Looking forward to some more replies, Cheers,
Sebastian
Peter Cock schrieb:
Hello all,
A philosophical question - for my Galaxy tools and wrappers, I have been using open source software (OSS) licences, e.g. the MIT license, or GPL.
For licensing my Galaxy workflows, should I also treat them as software and do the same, or as a protocol document and go for something like one of the Creative Commons licenses? e.g. CC BY, or CC BY-SA
Thanks,
Peter