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

[Diane Peters]

Copyright is not available for US government works as a matter of US
copyright law (section 105), but that does not mean those works may not be
restricted by copyright laws of other countries. Congress contemplated that
expressly.

“The prohibition on copyright protection for United States Government works
is not intended to have any effect on protection of these works abroad.
Works of the governments of most other countries are copyrighted. There are
no valid policy reasons for denying such protection to United States
Government works in foreign countries, or for precluding the Government
from making licenses for the use of its works abroad.”

Notes of Committee on the Judiciary (re Section 105), H.R. Rep. No. 1476,
94th Cong., 2d Sess. 59 (1976)


Given this, it remains unclear how a license to the worldwide public would
be invalidated by a court? Please say more.


On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US) <
cem.f.karan.civ at mail.mil> wrote:

> 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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>
>
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