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

[Gervase Markham]

On 25/07/16 15:12, Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US) wrote:
> 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.

Protections from whom? It can't be from the USG, because it has no
rights in the code to assert in court. And it can't be from other
contributors, because if you get them all to contribute under the Apache
2.0 license, then all users are as protected as in a normal Apache project.

It seems to me like the people who wrote the law that the USG does not
have a copyright intended that the USG therefore not assert
copyright-like control over work created by the USG. Trying to re-create
that control via contract seems to me to be working against the spirit
of the law.

Gerv