[License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: US Army Research Laboratory Open Source License proposal

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: License-discuss [mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org] On 
> Behalf Of Philippe Ombredanne
> Sent: Friday, July 22, 2016 5:12 PM
> To: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: [Non-DoD Source] Re: [License-discuss] US Army Research Laboratory 
> Open Source License proposal
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL
> (US) <cem.f.karan.civ at mail.mil> wrote:
>
> > Hi, my name is Cem Karan.  I work for the US Army Research Laboratory
> > (ARL) in Adelphi, MD.  I'm in charge of defining the Open Source
> > policy for ARL.  As a part of this, we need a license that meets our
> > legal and regulatory needs, but is ideally fully interchangeable with
> > everything licensed under the Apache 2 license as defined at
> > Caution-http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt. We also want our 
> > license to be fully accepted by OSI as a valid Open Source
> license.
> >
> > Unfortunately, we cannot directly use the Apache 2 license for all of
> > our code.  Most of our researchers work for the US Federal Government
> > and under US copyright law any works they produce during the course of
> > their duties do not have copyright attached, so we have to rely on
> > contract law as a protection mechanism within the USA.
>
> What about this simpler approach: you could release your software under a 
> choice of two licenses:
> - a public domain dedication (such as CC-0 or your own dedication) OR
> - the Apache-2.0
>
> Could this alleviate the need to create a new license and still address your 
> needs?

We did consider this, but the problem is still liability, trademark, and IP 
protection, all of which the Apache 2.0 license provides.  This has to extend 
not only to (and from) us, but between contributors.

Thanks,
Cem Karan
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