Question on OSD #5

[John Cowan]

Tzeng, Nigel H. scripsit:

> I guess my question is if a statute says "you can only release information 
> to people with the correct clearance" you can still reuse the software even if you 
> do not have rights to do so unless you release code to downstream users who
> may not have the correct clearance to see the code?

In the U.S. at least, people who handle classified data are allowed to do so
because they have personally undertaken to obey the rules.  No license, of
course, can exempt you from the consequences of your freely undertaken
contracts.

For that matter, no license I know of requires distribution of anything
to anyone, with the marginal exception of certain licenses that insist
on patches being sent back to the upstream licensor.  Such licenses
are un-Free and very few of them, if any, are Open Source.

-- 
John Cowan   cowan at ccil.org  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is
dramatically overdescribed.  Still other languages are simultaneously
overdescribed and underdescribed.  Welsh pertains to the third category.
        --Alan King