Status of US Government Works in foreign countries
Dear all,
I am working on packaging a library developed by US Census Bureau. All
information about it can be found here:
https://www.census.gov/srd/www/x13as/
As it is developed by part of the US Government, it is thus considered
as uncopyrighted at least in the US. Here is the relevant part though:
This Software was created by U.S. Government employees and therefore is
not subject to copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. §105). The
United States/Department of Commerce reserves all rights to seek and
obtain copyright protection in countries other than the United States.
US Goverment public domain issue has been discussed a few times in this
mailing list [1]. According to the interpretation by [2], this would
fall into public domain abroad as well and second part of the above
licence snippet may be unenforceable.
I wonder therefore whether it is legally sound to state licence as
'public-domain' for the package and include the licence and disclaimer
text from the website. Would the package under this license qualify as
free, non-free or should be outside Debian?
In my view, libtnt package in the main repo may be the one setting a
precedent here as it refers to the same (17 U.S.C §105), although its
licence does not specify restrictions to foreign countries.
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00164.html
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00300.html
Rytis
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