Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries
Rytis <rbagd@openmailbox.org> writes:
> Apparently, lawyers of the US Commerce Department didn't want to give
> up property rights but they modified the license to say the following
> [1].
>
> ---
> 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/U.S. Department of Commerce (“Commerce”) reserve all
> rights to seek and obtain copyright protection in countries other than
> the United States. The United States/Commerce hereby grant to User a
> royalty-free, nonexclusive license to use, copy, and create derivative
> works of the Software outside of the United States.
> ---
>
> Last sentence seems to be a dense endorsement of FOSS principles and,
> while probably not the cleanest way to state it, appears at first
> sight to comply with free software licenses.
>
> Anyone have a take on this?
It's a good effort at free software. Are you in correspondence with
those people? (Thank you.)
The “use” permission is vague enough to be pretty much pointless IMO. I
don't know whether anyone's actions under copyright law have ever
referred to the copyright holder granting permission to “use” the work.
But it's not a problem for DFSG-conformance.
One large problem: I can't see that the above conditions grant freedom
to redistribute in modified or unmodified form. That fails the DFSG, by
my reading.
By comparison, the Expat license grants permission:
[…] to deal in the Software without restriction, including without
limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so […]
If the set of permissions granted in X13 could be extended to say that,
we'd be in a better position with regard to the DFSG.
--
\ “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they |
`\ are the solution.” —Clay Shirky, 2012 |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
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