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

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

From: License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org>> on behalf of "Smith, McCoy" <mccoy.smith at intel.com<mailto:mccoy.smith at intel.com>>

>>"I don't believe that there is an OSD requirement that the lawyers on License-Review/License-Discuss agree that the legal concern being addressed by a new license submission is valid.  *Especially when other lawyers disagree.*"

>The problem is, I think to many of us commenting here, is that those other lawyers are not part of this conversation.  And for whatever reason have said they will not be.  So we're hearing "I'm not a lawyer, but unnamed lawyers have >told me there is this problem, but have not explained their basis for finding that problem."

>So there is likely some skepticism that there is a need at all for this license, as it seems to be just Apache 2.0, with clauses to address a problem that many (or all) of the lawyers on here are not even sure exists.

I get that, but you won't be the ones that have to deal with any problems that arise if the issue does exist.  If approving ARL OSL and NOSA gives NASA and ARL/Army the legal warm fuzzies to be more liberal in open sourcing code then one new special purpose license doesn't hurt anyone even on the proliferation front.  Only one because NOSA 1.3 would get retired in favor of NOSA 2.0.

The White House can mandate 20% OSS release across all agencies but it's easy for any agency uncomfortable with open sourcing their software to simply decline.  In many places it's as easy as writing a classification guide that says all software developed for this agency is automatically FOUO or LES.  Then open sourcing anything becomes a royal pain in the rear and not open sourcing anything is as simple as writing a disclaimer that points at the class guide.

And OSI's intransigence on CC0 may come around and bite it in the rear if a significant FedGov OSS mandate starts off with CC0 as a default open source license for the USG because that's what they did for code.gov and it's the only one that fits the bill for public domain software.  And I don't recall that CC0  "contains any specific terms about distribution of source code" so if CC0 is usable for software then so is CC-BY and perhaps CC-BY-SA.
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