Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> Ben Finney writes ("Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries"):
> > The cases are different, this license text grants no permission to
> > redistribute at all.
> >
> > If you think it does, what text do you see that grants permission to
> > redistribute in modified or unmodified form?
>
> You mean that `use, copy and create derivative works' might not
> include distribution of copies ?
There is no mention of any permission to distribute. I don't see any
sensible reading of a grant of only “use, copy and create derivative
works” that would allow the recipient to presume permission to
redistribute anything.
> I think that's a tendentious reading. I think we can discount the risk
> that the US government would attack distributors of free software on
> such a basis.
Even dismissing that, which I didn't raise as a possibility, the simple
application of legal conservatism – the organisation's lawyers reads the
text to grant as little as possible – is sufficient to concern the
Debian Project for not having explicit permission to redistribute.
The copyright holder doesn't need to be hostile, merely unwilling to
grant more than what's already in writing. Surely we have enough
experience with that to consider it a risk.
> However, I agree that it would be better if it said:
> use, copy, modify and distribute the Software and works
> derived from it
> or something.
If the permission to redistribute the work, as required by DFSG §1, were
explicit in the license grant, then yes that would help a lot.
--
\ “The whole area of [treating source code as intellectual |
`\ property] is almost assuring a customer that you are not going |
_o__) to do any innovation in the future.” —Gary Barnett |
Ben Finney
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