FYI: CC-BY license for all new Forum content from today (Dec 1)

I don't feel personally affected by this change but this seems to matter a lot to other people, for example:

• If there is any chance you'll publish your work in an academic journal, or otherwise will be publishing it somewhere else in the future... not all publishers will care about this license, but it might be prudent to be cautious because some definitely will.

• If you do not want podcasts or translations of your work to be made without your consent (e.g. maybe you'd want to work with any translators to ensure accuracy — you now won't be able to control this).

• If you do not want your work potentially to be used for commercial purposes.

• If your work is done for contract, and not funded by a grant, you'll need to review the contract terms and depending on the terms of the contract, you may need to get consent from the funder prior to posting.

• The CC BY 4.0 license is irrevocable, so even if you think there is a chance of your mind changing with regards to one of the above, you could be screwed.

I think people posting deserve to make an informed choice. I'm happy to see the new posting includes a checkbox "Before you can publish this post you must agree to the terms of use including your content being available under a CC-BY license" - this satisfies me. But still possible people might not fully understand the implications so I encourage people to be thoughtful about this.

I'd be interested in hearing from downvoters here; this seems to me like a fairly anodyne-ly beneficial post, so while I wasn't expecting a bunch of strong upvotes I also wasn't expecting downvotes. I'm curious what the disagreement is.

Thanks for the heads up! I suggest adding the following to the forum sidebar:

• A link to the TOU
• A statement like "Content published after December 1, 2022 is available under a CC BY 4.0 license" (unless there is already a license banner on each page).

Thanks for posting this Will!