[License-discuss] Possible alternative was: Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) Version 0.4.1

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

Larry,

Zero disagreement. The fact is that CC0 is already being used for government source code released as open source. Half the examples provided on the code.gov are licensed cc0 and on the github discussion the response was that cc0 was Open Source as far as fedgov was concerned even if not OSI approved.

This was brought up months ago and ignored.

Nigel


Sent with BlackBerry Work (www.blackberry.com)

From: Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com<mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com>>
Date: Wednesday, Mar 01, 2017, 12:58 PM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org <license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>>
Cc: Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com<mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Possible alternative was: Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) Version 0.4.1

Nigel Tzeng wrote:
> If DOSA explicitly defines the licensing authority I would prefer it be stated as any DOD approved open source license.

Isn't that already true for every software distributor, including the U.S. government? Every distributor controls its own licensing strategies. Even Google asserts that authority for itself, refusing AGPL software. I have no problem with that level of independence. That is (perhaps unfortunately) why there are so many FOSS licenses.

But the concern is yet another FOSS license for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

A proposed solution, however, is that the U.S. government will distribute software under CC0. I don't care if that is sensible. I don't care if that is odd. I do care that CC0 be an OSI-approved license, regardless of its flaws.

That will reaffirm the authority in our community of the OSI-approved open source license list, regardless of the elegance of that solution for DOSA.

/Larry


From: License-discuss [mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of Tzeng, Nigel H.
Sent: Wednesday, March 1, 2017 9:23 AM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Possible alternative was: Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) Version 0.4.1

OSI approval is not explicitly required under DOSA. It just says open source license.

If DOSA explicitly defines the licensing authority I would prefer it be stated as any DOD approved open source license.

That would insure that any projects we develop for sponsors and released as open source will be under a license that has been reviewed and accepted by DOD legal from both from a security as well as compliance standpoint.
From: Jim Wright <jwright at commsoft.com<mailto:jwright at commsoft.com>>
Date: Wednesday, Mar 01, 2017, 11:53 AM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org> <license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Possible alternative was: Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) Version 0.4.1

Certainly the approach code.mil spells out to contributions seems ok without having to address the license issue at all, but these questions seem orthogonal to me.  Cem seems to be trying to ensure that all open source projects operating using this process are under an OSI approved license, which appears to require them to pick one (or several) FOSS licenses to actually apply.  CC0 doesn't work for that purpose because it's not OSI approved anyway and also doesn't have a patent license, but observing this doesn't solve Cem's problem of how to license this stuff in a way that *is* OSI approved, which I think is what he's getting at.  (Feel free to correct me...)


> On Mar 1, 2017, at 8:29 AM, Richard Fontana <fontana at sharpeleven.org<mailto:fontana at sharpeleven.org>> wrote:
>
> Well the complication is mainly a response to Cem wanting the OSI to
> bless his proposed approach. I think however that code.mil has already
> rejected this sort of idea.
>
> I think the code.mil approach is much more elegant without introducing
> the use of CC0.
>
>

_______________________________________________
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:License-discuss at opensource.org>
https://lists.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20170301/33a09095/attachment.html>