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

[Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US)]

The only reason that the ARL OSL was proposed AT ALL is because there is a 
strong concern that since USG code doesn't have copyright [1], any license 
that relies exclusively on copyright may be invalidated by the courts [2].  If 
the USG had copyright, then I could stop pushing the ARL OSL entirely as we 
could use any of the OSI-supplied licenses.

So to be 100% clear, we don't know if any copyright-based license will stand 
up in court for works that don't have copyright attached.  The only reason 
that the ARL OSL was proposed was to deal with that particular situation.  If 
you have case law where the USG won a lawsuit over material licensed under one 
of the copyright-based OSI licenses where there was no claim of copyright, 
please provide it.  I can pass that to the ARL Legal team who can then review 
it.

Thanks,
Cem Karan

[1] I'm making the usual assumption that this was code created by USG 
employees in the course of their duties; copyright can be assigned to the USG 
where and when it exists, but I'm ignoring that for right now.

[2] My expectation is that it would be invalidated for the USG-supplied 
portion, but not for any portion that had copyright attached.  Note that this 
is just my opinion, and I have nothing to back it up.  IANAL.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: License-discuss [mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org] On 
> Behalf Of Smith, McCoy
> Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 2:54 PM
> To: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: 
> U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL)
> 0.4.0
>
> Or to put a finer point on it, the other issues you identify appear to be 
> ones that are explicitly addressed in many already-approved OSI
> licenses, including Apache 2.0, the one you are modeling your license upon.
>
> I hope you're getting a sense that there are several lawyers on this mailing 
> list -- lawyers who have years of experience looking at,
> debating, and giving advice on the issues you identify in this submission --  
> who think that your proposed license is a variant of Apache 2.0
> designed to solve a "problem" for USG users with Apache 2.0 that we are 
> skeptical even exists.  Perhaps the ARL lawyers can clarify what
> the problem is, and that we are missing something.  But I think at least I 
> am having a hard time understanding how this license does
> anything that Apache 2.0 doesn't.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: License-discuss 
> [Caution-mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of Richard 
> Fontana
> Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 11:33 AM
> To: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: 
> U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL)
> 0.4.0
>
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 06:17:07PM +0000, Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL 
> (US) wrote:
> >
> > Once again, liability isn't the only issue; there are also copyright
> > issues (for contributors), and IP issues.  If we could solve the
> > problem via a simple disclaimer of liability, we would.  We need to handle 
> > ALL the issues.
>
> Even if you were correct in the assertions you've made about ARL code, why 
> is a new license needed for contributors other than ARL?


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