[License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

[Christopher Sean Morrison]

The point here though is the assumption ARL is apparently making, that
an effective warranty or liability disclaimer must be tied to a
(seemingly) contractual instrument. CC0 is evidence that some lawyers
have thought otherwise.


They have acknowledged as much.  However, lacking precedent evidence to the contrary, ARL's lawyer believes recipients can be held to the contractual terms and this would give the Gov't (or some downstream contributor) standing to stop a bad actor.


It's also been opined that the warranty and liability disclaimer could be lost if they use a copyright-based license (presumably that the whole license would be found invalid due to no copyright, not just the copyright statement bits).  I don't agree that would happen as DoJ makes a determination of liability under their own tort/negligence criteria, but also not tested except for cases of gross negligence.



Can anyone cite precedence for someone trying to put restrictions via contract/EULA on a public domain work such it was either upheld or shot down in court?  All the various NOSA codes that have been released would be apropos...



Based on this whole thread, I imagine that even if CC0 were
OSI-approved, ARL would find fault with it given that it seems to
assume that the copyright-waiving entity actually does own
copyright. (I have actually found CC0 attractive in some situations
where there is acknowledged uncertainty about copyright ownership.)


No disagreement.  It just goes from being strictly off the table without OSI-certification to necessary-but-not-sufficient.



Cheers!

Sean




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20160816/6dd082be/attachment.html>