>> Keith Gorlen, >> the author of the NIH (National Institutes of Health) class library, >> told me once that his work, being a ``US Government work'' is in the >> public domain and *cannot* be copyrighted or licensed. That is, >> *nothing* that anyone does with his work can legally prevent anyone >> from copying it, so there is no meaningful way of licensing it.
Beman> If I understand correctly, what was being requested was that it Beman> be possible to clearly associate each file with its legal Beman> status. So in the case you mention, I guess they would want to Beman> see a notice to the effect it was a "US Government work" and Beman> that it was in the public domain. No -- what the FSF wanted was for the author to assign the copyright to the FSF, and Keith could not do that because once a work is in the public domain, it is no longer possible for the FSF or anyone else to copyright it. I expect that someone may say that actual ownership by the FSF is not an issue here--that all FSF wanted was to be able to put the work under GPL (which would also be impossible for a public-domain work). However, I'm quite sure that ownership is the issue, because the same issue rears its head in http://www.xemacs.org/About/XEmacsVsGNUemacs.html -- Andrew Koenig, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.research.att.com/info/ark _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
