For Approval: TVA Open Source License

Tzeng, Nigel H. Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu
Fri Sep 11 22:06:31 UTC 2009


So...your lawyers believe that you fall under 17 USC 105 but you aren't REALLY part of the US Government because you're self funded?

That's an interesting position to take and not very compelling for not using an acceptable NOSA 1.4 should there be one.

In any case, given that NASA is also a government agency, the change from USG to US Government Agency is probably not going to be a deal breaker for them although "USG or US Government Agency" would be better even if it sounds redundant.

Your OGC does believe that the TVA operates as a US federal agency right?  Otherwise y'all should drop that .gov address and go to .org like MITRE.  And heck, they even have a congressional budget line item as a FFRDC.

Given that NOSA itself is evidently only moderately government wide friendly (since TVA apparently wont use it), I would put a little more effort in making any new USG open source license something any government agency can reuse before suggesting approval. Thus far, I see little reuse possibilities for the TVA license and it's pretty close to a vanity license.

Otherwise we may end up with a bunch of  <Your Agency Here> Open Source Agreement submissions all claiming some special regulatory status requiring their own OSA.


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