How do I document licenses of code snippets on a web page with a CC BY 4.0 license?

Question

I have a non-trivial amount of text, image, audio, and video content that I'm licensing as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). I chose this license because it allows people to redistribute, use or remix the content that I produce for any purpose, as long as I am properly attributed. I hope to apply this license to a site as a whole, since it applies to the vast majority of the content.

However, mixed in with this content is software source code. Are there any special concerns that I need to be aware of, with respect to license marking?

I know that:

• The instructions for the Apache license say to include a LICENSE file in the project and a statement in the header of each source file. There's no way to include a LICENSE file in something like a Gist or a web page, but the content header is achievable. However...
• Including the license content or the Apache required header can be obnoxious for every code block on a CC-BY page. It's far less of a problem on a Gist page, though. There may be a way to mark a page that appropriately indicates the license of source code on the page in a good way, but I haven't found guidance.
• Creative Commons doesn't provide guidance for marking a mixed-content page on their page for marking guidance.

Ultimately, I think this boils down to two closely related questions:

1. How should I appropriately mark source code posted to something like a GitHub Gist, where it is only a single file, especially when the license recommends a LICENSE file?
2. How should I appropriately mark source code when posting it on CC-BY page?

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My questions are somewhat related to two other questions here on Open Source:

• Can I "Override" a licensing policy?
• How to license Stack Overflow contributions as permissive as possible?

There are a few differences, though. What I'm asking is closest to the how-to question, but unlike Stack Overflow, I don't have a profile page to use to add a disclaimer that I'm overriding a license and applying a dual-license. I'm also interested in not dual-licensing content, but applying a specific license (CC-BY 4.0) to one type of content (non-software content) and another license (Apache, BSD, MIT, etc.) to another type of content (source code).

Answer 1

1. Single-file formats

There are, as you correctly note, formats in which it's not possible to include a license file - GitHub gists are the most obvious. In those cases, it's not essential - license files are actually never essential, just recommended for clarity of the license. In those cases, your best bet is to use a header in the source file, specifying copyright and license. Here's an example of just this.

2. CC BY webpages

This boils down to a pretty simple question: are you the web admin? In other words, can you change that page as you like?

If you can (i.e. it's your website or something), then there are a number of things you could do. You can:

• add a note in the footer, like SE does: content licensed under CC BY; code snippets under the MIT license (with links to the licenses)
• add a similar note, just before or just after the code, specifying the license
• add a paragraph in any TOS you have, specifying copyright/license status for content and code.

Be careful of saying "content" - it's ambiguous. My example above isn't worded too well; saying content licensed under CC BY; code snippets under the MIT license could be read as my code snippets are licensed under CC BY and the MIT license. You could instead say non-code content licensed...; code licensed ... to make it clearer.

If you don't control the webpage where it's displayed, then your only option is to add a header in the code itself. Assuming that the entire code file will be displayed on the page, the copyright header will also be displayed - and hopefully, the webpage's design will make the scope that the license applies to obvious.

Alternatively, if like on SE you have control over another part of the site (i.e. a personal profile), you can add a note covering all your code contributions there. See How to license Stack Overflow contributions as permissive as possible? and Can I "Override" a licensing policy? for more information on this.