Re: CDF ?

[Jens Ritter <jens@hilbert.weh.rwth-aachen.de>]

Konstantinos Margaritis <markos@debian.org> writes:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> On Sun, 06 Jun 1999, Raul Miller wrote:
> > Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> wrote:
> > > In the case of NASA, being US government, I think that license may be a
> > > poorly worded "this work is Public Domain"...  I may be wrong though,
> > > especially given that it's 03:48 here, so don't quote me on that.
> > 
> > Yep.  It's not a license, merely a restatement of the fact that
> > government agencies (and government employees doing their government
> > jobs) are not allowed to hold copyrights, but must assign 
> > their work into the public domain.
> > 
> > The underlying idea is that these works were funded by tax dollars
> > and are must therefore be available to all tax payers.  This is
> > also the basis of the Freedom of Information Act, which requires 
> > public access to all non-classified government documents.
> 
> So basically, suppose I package cdf (which I already have), will it be
> included in main? And will programs that depend on it be included in main
> also? And finally, I understand that it is Public Domain of US tax payers,
> but Debian is a global organization. Maybe this puts such software in a
> non-us status? I really hope not.

No it does not. Public Domain means no one holds a copyright on
this. Everyone is free to do what he likes with it (even selling and
withholding the source is allowed).  

In addition I have heard that there cannot be a copyright on a file
format (from the "ipix case" mentioned on slashdot recently). 

Jens

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---
Jens.Ritter@weh.rwth-aachen.de   grimaldi@debian.org
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