[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 6:07 AM, Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US) <
cem.f.karan.civ at mail.mil> wrote:

>
> In terms of the NOSA 2.0 license, the goal is to support the OSD despite
> not having copyright attached to most US government works within US
> jurisdiction.


Simply having the software be in the public domain and available in
source-code form is sufficient to comply with the OSD, if you don't attempt
to add contractual terms.

would OSI (or anyone else) be willing to indemnify the US Government, and
> all downstream users, against any OSI-approved license being declared fully
> null and void solely because the license had copyright clauses in it that
> were declared invalid because the covered work didn't have copyright
> attached?


What would we be indemnifying the US Government for? A good many of us are
U.S. citizens and the software is our property. The horse is already out of
the barn in that copyright law doesn't protect it. NASA has seen fit to
discard its trade-secret protection and any protection applicable to
government secrets. Having discarded these things, there is no obligation
transmissible from the first licensee to the second.

The solution for public-domain material is to simply leave it in the public
domain.

    Thanks

    Bruce
-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP - CEO, Legal Engineering
Standards committee chair, license review committee member, co-founder,
Open Source Initiative
President, Open Research Institute; Board Member, Fashion Freedom
Initiative.
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