[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 Gervase Markham
> Sent: Monday, July 25, 2016 9:24 AM
> To: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: US Army Research 
> Laboratory Open Source License proposal
>
> On 25/07/16 13:46, Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US) wrote:
> > 1) Put out a notice to the world that the code covered under the
> > license is 'AS-IS'; the whole 'no warranty' part in the Apache 2.0
> > license.  This needs to cover not only the USG, but also any
> > contributors.  The USG is (in my
> > opinion) well-funded and capable of defending itself.  Persons or
> > entities that are charitable enough to contribute to our projects may
> > not be; I personally would consider it to be poor form to leave them
> > unprotected after they've been kind enough to help with our projects.
> > Notifying anyone that downloads the code that there is no warranty helps 
> > protect against liability.
>
> But "Persons or entities that are charitable enough to contribute to our 
> projects" also hold copyright. Therefore, you don't have to solve
> any "there isn't a copyright" problem for them - you just use the Apache 
> License.
>
> It seems to me that the best way to achieve what you want is to stick an 
> Apache License on it and to say "some of this work may have
> been created by USG employees, and those parts are not under copyright in 
> the USA".
> If someone wants to dig through and extract those parts only and turn them 
> into something else and put it under their own license, they
> can - but who would.
>
> Saying "all the copyrightable bits are Apache" solves your problem from a 
> licensing perspective.
>
> If you want to solve the problem that the USG has no copyright by turning a 
> copyright license into a contract (e.g. to challenge
> misrepresentation), then that's a massive change, which will be much more of 
> a headache than any other scheme you could come up with.

Even though it will be headache to do so, we still need to.  USG works that 
don't have copyright attached must still have a license/contract that offers 
the same protections as one would expect from the Apache 2.0 license.

Thanks,
Cem Karan
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