[License-review] [Non-DoD Source] Re: 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 1:52 PM, Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US) <
cem.f.karan.civ at mail.mil> wrote:
>
> > I'm not saying you should not grant rights under a copyright regime.
> Attempting to contractually control the public domain within the
> > US, though, is too problematical.
> So, give them the rights to the material under a license of some kind?
> One that doesn't depend on (non-existent) copyright?  Like NOSA 2.0 is
> doing?


No. Give them a license that depends on copyright, and can be enforced
where copyright exists, and is silent about its effect where copyright
doesn't exist. This does not restrict your capability to disclaim
warranties, grant patent rights, and state terms for contributors (although
a CLA is still advised). If you want to be nice to US citizens, tell them
they may have additional rights.

>
> For what it's worth, I understand your concerns, but there are still two
> problems:
> - USG works can't use a license that depends on copyright for enforcement
>

USG can use a copyright based license that only makes grants and disclaims
warranties. It is when USG attempts to enforce restrictions that the
license fails. This does not necessarily invalidate the disclaimer of
warranties, but I would advise using a CLA rather than depending on the
terms in the license.


> - JOSS and other venues refuse to accept material that isn't under some
> OSI-approved license.


This is not insurmountable. IMO the JOSS position is extreme, even Debian
allows public domain software. There are other journals to contribute to
that would not present this barrier. For example IEEE gets a lot wider
publication than JOSS.
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