On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 11:31 -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: > That occurance of "licensed" doesn't refer to the copyright license. > It refers to DOE licensing of technology for operating nuclear > facilities. It's perfectly Free.
Indeed that probably explains why it was put in to begin with, but its use in this context only confuses people when they try to make sense of the license as a whole. Time and again its this particular wording that caused problems. I don't know if the wording was changed in response to these complaints but it may have been. The regulatory guides at nrc.gov (particularly CFR part 50, the power reactor guide 1.172, and NUREG-0800 chapter 7) can be an interesting read but they seem to only reinforce the fact that this is an unnecessary clause to begin with. Anyone getting approval for any software use in a nuclear facility already has their work cut out for them, I doubt they would be successful getting approval for random code taken from the internet. (with or without this clause in its license) I'm attempting to argue both sides here. I can see why our legal team wants this statement included but I can also see why its redundant. If something similar were needed in every software license to discourage its use in nuclear facilities then perhaps I shouldn't live near the largest nuclear power plant in the country. -duncan
