[CAVO] FW: [License-review] [Was: Submission of OSET Public License for Approval] -- National Security and Public Policy (3.5B and 4)

[Lawrence Rosen]

-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Berkus [mailto:josh at postgresql.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2015 7:54 AM
To: License submissions for OSI review <license-review at opensource.org>
Subject: Re: [License-review] [Was: Submission of OSET Public License for Approval] -- National Security and Public Policy (3.5B and 4)

On 09/14/2015 09:34 PM, Meeker, Heather J. wrote:

> We do take the point that the general nature of these terms is 
> potentially ambiguous.  However, even though national security and 
> public policy interests are named generally here and not called out as 
> particular statutes or regulations, the licensee would still 
> ultimately be responsible for proof (presumably in the context of a 
> defense against an enforcement claim by the copyright owner) for what 
> legitimately constitutes national security or public policy interests.  
> There is jurisprudence on each of these terms of art, from different 
> areas of the law.  So the question of what constitutes national 
> security and public policy interests is not arbitrary, though it may not be specific.

That may be true under US law (the lawyers will need to weigh in on this), but would it be true internationally?

> Speaking to the specific case in the comment, to the extent the end 
> user is a government, and the government is not engaging in 
> re-distribution, the conditions of the license are not applicable in any case.

Your team seems to be making some pretty strong assumptions about who is going to use this software.  One of the things about releasing OSS is that you don't know who's going to use it, and assuming things gets you into trouble.

For example, nothing you've told me so far has invalidated my scenario of code appropriation:

1. Company X grabs the OSET sofware;

2. They modify it for a voting product;

3. They get a compliant legislator to declare secrecy in voting software to be "in the public interest".

4. Company X goes on the road selling modified OSET software without ever releasing the modifications to the end users, yet still calling it "open source", or even "OSET voting software".

Having dealt with the San Francisco and Calfornia governments for years, this sort of scenario seems all-too-plausible.

Keep in mind that I'm representing the developer perspective, here, as in "would I contribute to this project?"  So far, the answer is definitely "no", specifically because of that language.

--Josh Berkus


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