>>From: License-discuss <license-discuss-boun...@lists.opensource.org> On 
>>Behalf Of Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY CCDC ARL (USA) via License-discuss
>>Sent: Friday, February 28, 2020 7:46 AM
>>To: license-discuss@lists.opensource.org
>>Cc: Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY CCDC ARL (USA) <cem.f.karan....@mail.mil>
>>Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: Resources to discourage 
>>governments from bespoke licenses?

 

>>As one of those people who keep trying to get recognition of how the US 
>>Government (USG) **really is** different, I’d like to point out the following 
>>issues:

 

>>Also as far as I know, none of the major Open Source licenses have a 
>>severability clause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability) to address 
>>what happens if one or more clauses in the license cannot be enforced, which 
>>leaves it up to the courts to decide what will happen.

Mozilla 2.0 does, Sec 9.  Eclipse 2.0 does, Sec. 7.  There are probably others, 
but those come to mind immediately.

 

>>This is where the weird ‘special snowflake’ issues keep coming up from (at 
>>least from my end).  The concern is that if we use e.g. Apache 2.0, we don’t 
>>know if the license will be struck in its entirety if the portions regarding 
>>copyright are struck.  

 

This is, IMHO, an odd concern. Given that open source license is founded upon 
copyright licensing, if the copyright provisions are struck, there is not much 
left.

 

>>NOSA was supposed to address that, and NOSA 3.0 was supposed to address the 
>>concerns over 2.0, but as far as I can tell, it’s dead in the water.

 

Was there ever a board decision on NOSA 3.0 (from the archives all I can see is 
discussion on v2)?  If not, is it because they were waiting for something from 
the authors?  I know I was  personally frustrated by the argument that seemed 
to continue to be made that “the government lawyers say it must be this way” 
but those government lawyers were not participating in the discussion.



>>If you really want to make those ‘special snowflake’ situations disappear, 
>>change the law so that the USG is no longer special, and can use the standard 
>>licenses.  I, for one, would be overjoyed to be able to use the regular 
>>licenses on all my works as it makes everyone’s life easier, including my 
>>own.  But as it currently stands, I don’t know if I’m exposing both the USG 
>>**and users of my work** if I use a standard license when some of the clauses 
>>don’t apply.

 

I think many commenters responded that these licenses *would* apply, but there 
was not response to that other than “but that’s not what the government lawyers 
say.”

[There also were some concerns about non-reciprocity, IIRC, to which the 
response was the same as above]

 

 

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