NASA Open Source Agreement
I've asked the OSI license mailing list about this, and I wanted to
get the Debian take on it. I didn't see this discussion anywhere else
on this list already. Sorry if I missed it.
The OSI has approved version 1.3 of the NASA Open Source Agreement
(NOSA), but the FSF has a problem with section 3, paragraph G of the
license. The issue that the FSF cites is as follows:
"The NASA Open Source Agreement, version 1.3, is not a free software
license because it includes a provision requiring changes to be your
“original creation”. Free software development depends on combining
code from third parties, and the NASA license doesn't permit this."
Here's a link to the NOSA v1.3:
http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/documents/NASA_Open_Source_Agreement_1.3.pdf
I noticed that WorldWind (which was released under the NOSA) is in the
non-free repository. It has also been explained to me that this could
be because the WorldWind Java repositories are closed, and not
necessarily because of the license. In general, it sounds like there
is not a consensus on whether or not the NOSA is actually a free
software license. I was wondering if the NOSA is indeed considered by
the Debian community to be a non-free license, and if so what would
need to be changed to get NOSA licensed software out of the non-free
repositories.
The discussion on the OSI list is here:
http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:17058:201104:kpokeidhhkjmdjmkjknd
And notes on licensing issues from the 2011 NASA Open Source Summit are here:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1TagS_gwDhDfxjr7WpG78_aIcfoPO1tMXBPeCMEE3-Us&pli=1
What got me started researching this was an idea that was posted on
NASA's IdeaScale page:
http://opennasaplan.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Revise-NOSA-to-become-more-free/123641-7200
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Jeremy
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