[Discuss] Govt Source Code Policy

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Rich Pieri)]

On 4/7/2016 2:13 PM, Mike Small wrote:
> Interesting. I don't think it shows that but it does appear to be an
> example of a government agency asserting copyright. And now I'm mixed up
> again cause I thought they couldn't do that.

Because they are not doing what you seem to think they are doing. Do
read the first document I linked because it's entirely possible that I
misrepresented something -- not hard when trying to summarize three
pages of legalese into one sentence.


> I don't think it shows what you say unless the argument is that these
> OASCR people are bright as hell and they don't even mention rms's
> arguments so therefore said arguments must be crap. [snip]

DoE-funded scientists are the same scientists who work on Fermi Linux
(GPL), Scientific Linux (GPL), Octave (GPL), ROOT (GPL) and so forth.
They are no strangers to various FLOSS licenses. In fact, it was their
activities which originally brought about the DoE's OSS policies, not
the other way around.

Also, the exclusion of RMS's arguments does not make their argument
crap. It means they see his arguments as crap and not worth bringing up.
Especially since the audience is already far more familiar with RMS than
the people at the DoE.


> This is puzzling. First in its specificity: there are other software
> licenses that seem to more or less accomplish what CC BY does.

The GPL does not. The GPL fails to meet one of the most important
academic criteria: recognition. What RMS calls onerous advertising is
treasured by the academic community. That the GNU licenses permit the
removal of recognition notices makes them unsuitable for academic works.

> Further what are they thinking about with the issue of "retaining
> copyright."

Public domain. The statement isn't a restriction; it's a clarification
that DoE funding does not require putting works into the public domain.

-- 
Rich P.