Cem, The USG does not need OSI’s approval to release code as open source under CC0. It has done so already on code.gov. This includes the OPM, NASA, GSA, DOT, DOL, DOC and others. CC0 is compliant with the Federal Source Code Policy for open source release.
It is unlikely that you can push CC0 through license review as you aren’t the license steward. It is up to CC to resubmit CC0 for approval. Regards, Nigel On 3/16/17, 8:56 AM, "License-discuss on behalf of Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US)" <[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]> wrote: All, I want to keep this alive as I haven't seen a conclusion yet. Earlier I asked if OSI would accept the US Government (USG) putting its non-copyrighted works out under CC0 as Open Source **provided** that the USG accepts and redistributes copyrighted contributions under an OSI-approved license. Is this acceptable to OSI? Should I move this discussion to the license-review list? To recap: 1) This would only cover USG works that do not have copyright. Works that have copyright would be eligible to use copyright-based licenses, and to be OSI-approved as Open Source would need to use an OSI-approved license. 2) The USG work/project would select an OSI-approved license that it accepted contributions under. The USG would redistribute the contributions under that license, but the portions of the work that are not under copyright would be redistributed under CC0. That means that for some projects (ones that have no copyrighted material at all initially), the only license that the works would have would be CC0. I can't speak to patents or other IP rights that the USG has, I can only comment on what the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has done (https://github.com/USArmyResearchLab/ARL-Open-Source-Guidance-and-Instructions), which includes a step to affirmatively waive any patent rights that ARL might have in the project before distributing it. I am hoping that other agencies will do something similar, but have no power or authority to say that they will. Given all this, is it time to move this to license-review, or otherwise get a vote? I'd like this solved ASAP. Thanks, Cem Karan _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
