XSEDE Software Copyright and Licensing Guidance and Template Files
Put the XSEDE/LICENSE-template LICENSE.txt and NOTICE files into the base directory for your software source and deployment directories, replacing other license or copyright notice files. If you use LICENSE-template as a template when creating a new GIT repository, make sure to replace README.md with your software specific README.
This guidance applies to all software developed by the XSEDE program, whether maintained in https://github.com/XSEDE, bitbucket, https://software.xsede.org/svn/, or elsewhere.
For software that is developed by a single individual or by persons all employed by the same subawardee, the standard practices of that subawardee institution can be applied instead. The subaward agreements allow subawardees to claim copyright on software developed by their staff. For the approved practices in such situations, contact the appropriate office at your institution.
Modern software development best practices include associating copyright and licensing information with the code. XSEDE presents an interesting challenge in that (a) XSEDE itself is not an entity that can either hold a copyright or enforce a license, (b) much XSEDE software is collaboratively developed by persons at different XSEDE subawardee sites, and (c) XSEDE has a goal of producing open-source software, in line with the practices and expectations of most NSF awardees. Because of these unusual situations, the normal approaches of applying copyright and license information do not apply to XSEDE software.
Because the University of Illinois (UIUC) is the prime XSEDE awardee, we worked with the UIUC legal department to determine a suitable approach that can be consistently applied across XSEDE projects.
The approved licensing and copyright language from UIUC legal is in the NOTICE file. UIUC legal did confirm that we can adapt the language to other open-source licenses, with the caveat that "we can freely modify the license only if we are owners of the code (e.g., we cannot modify other people’s contributions to a different license).”