[License-review] NOSA 2.0 and Government licensing [was: moving to an issue tracker [was Re: Some notes for license submitters]]

[Bruce Perens]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 10:34 AM, Nigel T <nigel.2048 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Cem mentioned that he discussed these concerns at length in the past.  If
> you are unaware of what the concerns are then how can you be so
> declaratively insistent in your assertions that they can just leave code in
> the public domain?
>

I was around for Bryan discussing this once. However, as I laid out in
another message, the problem of public domain isn't unique to the
government, and actually effects every Open Source program, simply because
not all work can be copyrighted and all programs have portions that can not
be copyrighted. And yet we haven't had a severability attack on an Open
Source license that I am aware of.

It's not necessarily in the public domain in all jurisdictions.  This is
> one of the concerns that Cem and others have covered in the past.
>
That's correct. And as long as the license provides the required
permissions for the entire work, that's not a problem.

In contrast, the attempt to assert control over the public domain in the
U.S. by applying contractual terms and terms regarding NASA as a secondary
beneficiary create legal ambiguity as written, and also establishes a
really harmful precedent that is damaging for Open Source. We need the
public domain to be public domain without restrictions, or Open Source
can't really function. If public domain material is contractually
restricted, it takes away all potential to for Open Source to interoperate
with proprietary software. So for us to accept those terms would be
damaging to all Open Source.


> https://github.com/USArmyResearchLab/ARL-Open-Source-
> Guidance-and-Instructions
>

 This one accepts CC0 as a viable license for the public domain. CC0 is a
dedication to the public domain with no restrictive contractual terms. I
don't see why CC0 is acceptable here and the BSD license, for example, is
not.

https://github.com/Code-dot-mil/code.mil
>

What statement in there? It's the entire code.mil site.

https://github.com/openjournals/joss/issues/179
>

This is regarding JOSS acceptance policy, they note that licenses exist and
that it is better to use one even if you don't actually have rights to
grant.


> You also keep dodging the point that one of your primary concerns of
> license proliferation does not apply in the case of NOSA.
>

This is predicated on the Open Source community not actually attempting to
incorporate the work into anything.  I don't think it's realistic.

    Thanks

    Bruce
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20180620/d633929e/attachment-0001.html>