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
