[License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[John Cowan]

Henrik Ingo scripsit:

> Is the US governments exclusion of patents that explicit? 

The only thing that makes the U.S. Government different from any other
actor in IP law is that it cannot (and therefore its employees acting in
the scope of their employment cannot) acquire copyright on any works it
has created.  It can and does hold copyright that has been transferred
to it by other creators, and it can and does acquire patents.

That is what makes the NOSA 1.3 important as an OSI certified license.
It allows any U.S. government agency to open-source its works fully.

> John keeps asking for statements like above to always be based on
> specific OSD paragraphs. Maybe that's a good idea. I'll try to express
> my judgement of CC0:

Thanks.  I'll have to reflect further on your specifics about #5, #6,
#8, and #10.  As I said before, I think #1 is a reasonable argument
against CC0 but #7 is not.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
But that, he realized, was a foolish thought; as no one knew better than
he that the Wall had no other side.
        --Arthur C. Clarke, "The Wall of Darkness"