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

[Jim Wright]

Of course, as Richard pointed out earlier, this would also be true as to the ASL, etc., except to the extent that the government choosing to effectively “waive" patent rights as Cem has said is not the same thing as a terminable patent license in the ASL - the UPL thus arguably putting the government on the most equal footing possible with everyone else given the expressed intent re: license scope… maybe the grant of “any and all copyright rights” would make them feel better about the copyright grant by virtue of not suggesting there necessarily are any?  Obviously tooting the horn here but it seems odd to me to require a dedication to the public domain in any event - stuff is either in the public domain by law or isn’t, and to whatever extent it isn’t, we should have a copyright license, full stop.  Similarly as to patents, I don’t want to have to look at some ostensible policy on waiving patent rights, we should all have a clearly scoped patent license for the project, government and private contributors alike, and there is an easy vehicle to achieve this, use an OSI approved license.  


> On Mar 1, 2017, at 7:49 AM, Jim Wright <jim.wright at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> Indeed, if there’s no copyright in the US, there may be no need of a copyright license from the government here, but in any event there *is* an OSI approved permissive license that licenses both any applicable copyright rights (without actually requiring that the government have any) and patent rights applicable to the project - the UPL.  
> 
> If the government releases code under the UPL, and accepts contributions under the UPL, they are using an OSI approved license, full stop, no need of extra terms or to treat other contributors any differently than the government itself, no need of an express public domain dedication which is any different than what is already true by law, everyone is simply licensing whatever copyright rights they possess as well as whatever patent rights they possess covering the project as they contributed to or provided it, and it seems to me at first glance like nothing else need be done…?
> 
> Regards,
>  Jim
> 
> 
>> On Mar 1, 2017, at 6:49 AM, Richard Fontana <fontana at sharpeleven.org> wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 09:37:13AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
>>> Strictly speaking, the use of
>>> CC0 assumes that you have copyright ownership. 
>> 
>> I guess that's a bit of an overstatement, but still given the nature
>> of the angst I've heard from US government people over the years
>> concerning the use of nominal copyright licenses, I'd find it
>> surprising if CC0 was treated differently.
>> 
>> 
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