Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

2016-08-19 Thread Tzeng, Nigel H. 
On 8/19/16, 6:55 PM, "License-discuss on behalf of Rick Moen"

wrote:


>Speaking for Creative Commons, Christopher Allan Webber appears to have
>correctly understood this feedback to be _not_ at all a rejection of the
>licence but rather suggestions for its revision, which he said (in his
>note on Feb. 24, 2012 withdrawing the application) CC would consider
>when the organisation has time.  _He_ understood this, even though some
>people on this mailing list today appear not to have.

He said that CC would consider when they had more timeŠback in 2012Šso I
guess either Creative Commons has been insanely busy the last four years
or that was a very polite way of saying ³yah whatever, the FSF already
recommends CC0 even WITH the patent statement. You came to us, not us to
you².

Christopher was exceedingly polite during that discussion and CC has also
been publicly polite in general to the OSI.

My understanding then and now was that it had become clear to them that
Richard and Bruce was going to stall approval for a long time/forever
unless they took out the patent clause that the open data folks wanted. So
they withdrew because they were never going to do that and the discussions
were getting more and more heated.  The situation was immensely silly and
damaging to the OSI.

If you don¹t believe that was a correct assessment on their part then pray
tell the status of NOSA v2 that was originally submitted for approval in
2013.

If you don¹t consider it was damaging then consider this: the White House
has told government agencies that "Thou Shall Open Source 20% of Your
Software Portfolio² and their first example was their own code.gov site
released under CC0*.

So the idea that ³it¹s not really open source unless OSI approved² took a
major hit because either the folks promoting Open Source at the highest
level of government don¹t know who the OSI is or they simply don¹t care.

* After going back and looking the eRegulations project from the CFPB that
was cited as an example in the Federal Source Code Policy Memorandum is
also CC0.

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Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

2016-08-19 Thread Rick Moen 
Quoting Richard Fontana (font...@opensource.org):

> On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 08:55:54PM +, Tzeng, Nigel H. wrote:
> > If the USG is using CC0 for their new OSS initiative
> > is this something that should be revisited?
> 
> Yes, I think so. 
> 
> > Of course, you know I¹m of the opinion that is the OSI states a
> > license is open source if it passes the OSD then we should either
> > amend the OSD to require explicit patent grants moving forward or
> > not block useful new licenses because of the lack of a patent grant.
> 
> I'm inclined to agree with that. Note, though, the controversial issue
> with CC0 was the explicit refusal to grant a patent license.

More specifically, CCO's explicit claim that no patent rights shall be
conveyed though means of the CC0 grant.  It wasn't just a 'refusal to
grant', which would have been fairly ordinary among open source
licences.

For clarification, nobody at OSI claimed the problematic clause would
block moving forward.  Several members of license-review (including, I'm
pretty sure, you) merely asked Karl Fogel to consult with Creative
Commons to see if they might consider removing that clause, and
substituting one granting use of patent claims the licensor holds that
are necessary to use the software in the form it was licensed or
dedicated.  (There were also other comments, which I've not reviewed
today.)

Speaking for Creative Commons, Christopher Allan Webber appears to have
correctly understood this feedback to be _not_ at all a rejection of the
licence but rather suggestions for its revision, which he said (in his
note on Feb. 24, 2012 withdrawing the application) CC would consider
when the organisation has time.  _He_ understood this, even though some
people on this mailing list today appear not to have.

-- 
Cheers, Grossman's Law:  "In time of crisis, people do not rise to
Rick Moen   the occasion.  They fall to the level of their training."
r...@linuxmafia.com  http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#grossman
McQ! (4x80)
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Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

2016-08-19 Thread Richard Fontana 
On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 08:55:54PM +, Tzeng, Nigel H. wrote:
> If the USG is using CC0 for their new OSS initiative
> is this something that should be revisited?

Yes, I think so. 

> Of course, you know I¹m of the opinion that is the OSI states a license is
> open source if it passes the OSD then we should either amend the OSD to
> require explicit patent grants moving forward or not block useful new
> licenses because of the lack of a patent grant.

I'm inclined to agree with that. Note, though, the controversial issue
with CC0 was the explicit refusal to grant a patent license. I don't
think a license with a similar feature has been submitted for OSI
approval since the CC0 event. The OSI has approved at least one
license since that time that did not explicitly address patents.

Richard

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Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

2016-08-19 Thread Scott K Peterson 
> Ugh. I’m perfectly happy to give away my own code and patents when
> I choose to do so but I would be very unhappy if I accidentally gave
> away someone else’s work and cost them thousands of dollars of lost
> royalties.

This is a well-know problem with no solution for which all parties are happy in 
all cases. In addition to contributions to FOSS, this arises in connection with 
development of standards (the domain of the Rambus case, which I believe was 
mentioned earlier in this thread).

In order to appreciate why there is no general solution, it is useful to try 
sitting on each of the opposing sides of the issue: the contributor and a 
consumer of the contribution.

As pointed out, the contributor is troubled by the potential of impacting 
patents from a distant part of some larger world of which the contributor is a 
part. This can occur in companies of even modest size (see the IPO list below) 
and the challenge increases with the diversity of a company's overall business 
- in the extreme, consider a large diversified conglomerate. From the consumer 
perspective consider the following: A company X invests in use of software to 
which research lab Y contributed, only to later have a patent that covers that 
contribution asserted against it by the entity that owns lab Y. How OK is that? 
Perhaps different people will have different answers depending on the details.

The likelihood such a patent situation actually arising is probably quite 
small. But, how does that cut? Should the contributor or the consumer take 
comfort in that speculative low probability?

The IPO publishes annual lists of the assignees are large numbers of new US 
patents:
http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2015-Top-300-Patent-Owners.pdf

I see the Navy at 104, the Army at 201, DHHS at 214.

-- Scott



- Original Message - 
From: "Nigel H. Tzeng"  
To: "Lawrence Rosen" , license-discuss@opensource.org 
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2016 4:02:35 PM 
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. 
Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0 

From: License-discuss < license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org > on behalf of " 
lro...@rosenlaw.com " < lro...@rosenlaw.com > 

>There are other important reasons besides "aging out" why the claims of 
>copyright on parts of functional works like software are often denied. (See 17 
>U.S.C. 102(b), for example.) Aging out isn't the only obstacle to copyright 
>claims >that make the copyright aspects of FOSS licenses unenforceable while 
>they remain contracts to disclaim warranties. So when several here suggested 
>that ALL FOSS WORKS probably contain public domain content, this is ANOTHER 
>>example not involving aging. 

>The USG and ARL are not unique. Public domain is what it is for software works 
>for everyone here (and probably abroad too). A unique FOSS license isn't 
>necessary to "protect copyrights" in public domain works. Almost any FOSS 
>>contract will work to protect the licensor. 
The point is that the code fond in other FOSS WORKS that are in the public 
domain is generally not significant enough to contain an implantation of a 
software patent. This is why your shakespeare example isn’t valid and why the 
USG and ARL could be unique. Software in the public domain have neither an 
implicit or explicit patent grant. Which should be a concern of ARL. 

OSS licenses that do not explicitly handle the public domain case does not 
apparently meet the needs of the ARL (and probably the rest of the USG) because 
there may be a issue when no copyright exists. 

That said, it occurs to me that ARL would not want to use an Apache style 
patent grant but a ECL v2 style grant. Otherwise someone at the DOE could 
release source code that implements a patent owned by ARL that they are 
licensing to industry for royalties. Or vice versa. 




Under 15 US Code § 3710c a.1.A.i 

The head of the agency or laboratory, or such individual’s designee, shall pay 
each year the first $2,000, and thereafter at least 15 percent, of the 
royalties or other payments, other than payments of patent costs as delineated 
by a license or assignment agreement, to the inventor or coinventors, if the 
inventor’s or coinventor’s rights are assigned to the United States. 




According to this site: 
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9004.html 




It is estimated that the government has title to over 30,000 patents and 
annually files several thousand new applications. 




Ugh. I’m perfectly happy to give away my own code and patents when I choose to 
do so but I would be very unhappy if I accidentally gave away someone else’s 
work and cost them thousands of dollars of lost royalties. 

My assumption is that the USG is treated as a single legal entity for patent 
and copyright purposes which may be incorrect. Even if not, one would assume 
that ARL would be treated as part of the

Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

2016-08-19 Thread Tzeng, Nigel H. 
From: License-discuss 
>
 on behalf of "lro...@rosenlaw.com" 
>


>There are other important reasons besides "aging out" why the claims of 
>copyright on parts of functional works like software are often denied. (See 17 
>U.S.C. 102(b), for example.) Aging out isn't the only obstacle to copyright 
>claims >that make the copyright aspects of FOSS licenses unenforceable while 
>they remain contracts to disclaim warranties. So when several here suggested 
>that ALL FOSS WORKS probably contain public domain content, this is ANOTHER 
>>example not involving aging.



>The USG and ARL are not unique. Public domain is what it is for software works 
>for everyone here (and probably abroad too). A unique FOSS license isn't 
>necessary to "protect copyrights" in public domain works. Almost any FOSS 
>>contract will work to protect the licensor.



The point is that the code fond in other FOSS WORKS that are in the public 
domain is generally not significant enough to contain an implantation of a 
software patent.  This is why your shakespeare example isn't valid and why the 
USG and ARL could be unique.  Software in the public domain have neither an 
implicit or explicit patent grant.  Which should be a concern of ARL.

OSS licenses that do not explicitly handle the public domain case does not 
apparently meet the needs of the ARL (and probably the rest of the USG) because 
there may be a issue when no copyright exists.

That said, it occurs to me that ARL would not want to use an Apache style 
patent grant but a ECL v2 style grant.  Otherwise someone at the DOE could 
release source code that implements a patent owned by ARL that they are 
licensing to industry for royalties.  Or vice versa.

Under 15 US Code § 3710c a.1.A.i

The head of the agency or laboratory, or such individual's designee, shall pay 
each year the first $2,000, and thereafter at least 15 percent, of the 
royalties or other payments, other than payments of patent costs as delineated 
by a license or assignment agreement, to the inventor or coinventors, if the 
inventor's or coinventor's rights are assigned to the United States.

According to this site:  
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9004.html

 It is estimated that the government has title to over 30,000 patents and 
annually files several thousand new applications.

Ugh. I'm perfectly happy to give away my own code and patents when I choose to 
do so but I would be very unhappy if I accidentally gave away someone else's 
work and cost them thousands of dollars of lost royalties.

My assumption is that the USG is treated as a single legal entity for patent 
and copyright purposes which may be incorrect.  Even if not, one would assume 
that ARL would be treated as part of the Army and could impact any other Army 
lab, FFRDC, UARC or university and other organizations conducting research for 
the Army.
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Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

2016-08-19 Thread Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US) 
Exactly.  Anyone that gets something from the USG deserves to know that they 
won't be facing a patent lawsuit from any of the contributors.

Thanks,
Cem Karan

> -Original Message-
> From: License-discuss [mailto:license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org] On 
> Behalf Of Chris DiBona
> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 6:12 PM
> To: license-discuss@opensource.org
> Cc: Lawrence Rosen 
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. 
> Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL)
> 0.4.0
> 
> All active links contained in this email were disabled. Please verify the 
> identity of the sender, and confirm the authenticity of all links
> contained within the message prior to copying and pasting the address to a 
> Web browser.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In military contracting , patent grants are key to the point where I wouldn't 
> consider a non patent granting license from, say, lockheed as
> being open source at all.
> 
> 
> On Aug 18, 2016 3:05 PM, "Tzeng, Nigel H."  Caution-mailto:nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu > > wrote:
> 
> 
>   On 8/18/16, 3:57 PM, "License-discuss on behalf of Lawrence Rosen"
>    Caution-mailto:license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org >  on behalf of
> lro...@rosenlaw.com < Caution-mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com > >
>   wrote:
> 
> 
>   >Nigel Tzeng wrote:
>   >> The issue here is for code that is potentially quite substantial.  I
>   >>would think that would be a different scenario.
>   >
>   >If I include the works of Shakespeare in my software, it would of 
> course
>   >be substantial and yet still be public domain almost everywhere (?).
> 
>   If patents aren't a concern then okay.  Copyright lasts longer than
>   patents so for anything that is in the public domain because of age then
>   no patents would still apply.
> 
>   There isn¹t a lot of code that has aged out.  Only code written between
>   before 1963 and didn¹t get a renewal.
> 
>   ___
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> < Caution-https://lists.opensource.org/cgi-
> bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss >
> 



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Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

2016-08-19 Thread Lawrence Rosen 
Nigel Tzeng correctly noted about U.S. public domain code:

> There isn¹t a lot of code that has aged out.  Only code written between 
> before 1963 and didn¹t get a renewal.

 

There are other important reasons besides "aging out" why the claims of 
copyright on parts of functional works like software are often denied. (See 17 
U.S.C. 102(b), for example.) Aging out isn't the only obstacle to copyright 
claims that make the copyright aspects of FOSS licenses unenforceable while 
they remain contracts to disclaim warranties. So when several here suggested 
that ALL FOSS WORKS probably contain public domain content, this is ANOTHER 
example not involving aging. 

 

The USG and ARL are not unique. Public domain is what it is for software works 
for everyone here (and probably abroad too). A unique FOSS license isn't 
necessary to "protect copyrights" in public domain works. Almost any FOSS 
contract will work to protect the licensor. 

 

/Larry

 

 

 

-Original Message-
From: Tzeng, Nigel H. [mailto:nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 2:59 PM
To: Lawrence Rosen ; license-discuss@opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. 
Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

 

On 8/18/16, 3:57 PM, "License-discuss on behalf of Lawrence Rosen"

< 

 license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org on behalf of lro...@rosenlaw.com>

wrote:

 

 

>Nigel Tzeng wrote:

>> The issue here is for code that is potentially quite substantial.  I 

>>would think that would be a different scenario.

> 

>If I include the works of Shakespeare in my software, it would of 

>course be substantial and yet still be public domain almost everywhere (?).

 

If patents aren't a concern then okay.  Copyright lasts longer than patents so 
for anything that is in the public domain because of age then no patents would 
still apply.

 

There isn¹t a lot of code that has aged out.  Only code written between before 
1963 and didn¹t get a renewal.

 

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Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) 0.4.0

2016-08-19 Thread Karan, Cem F CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US) 
We apply for and are granted patents on a regular basis at ARL.  In fact, part 
of how scientists and engineers are evaluated on their performance can include 
the number of patents they get, all of which are owned by the USG.

Thanks,
Cem Karan

> -Original Message-
> From: License-discuss [mailto:license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org] On 
> Behalf Of Brian Behlendorf
> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 8:46 PM
> To: ch...@dibona.com; license-discuss@opensource.org
> Cc: Lawrence Rosen 
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: U.S. 
> Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL)
> 0.4.0
> 
> All active links contained in this email were disabled.  Please verify the 
> identity of the sender, and confirm the authenticity of all links
> contained within the message prior to copying and pasting the address to a 
> Web browser.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Totally agree.  But can the USG file patents?  I suppose research 
> organizations can (MITRE, maybe even NASA?) so it's not that academic;
> but presumably any place where this public domain arises, it applies to 
> patents too.  Would be nice to get that sorted.
> 
> Brian
> 
> On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, Chris DiBona wrote:
> > In military contracting , patent grants are key to the point where I 
> > wouldn't consider a non patent granting license from, say, lockheed as
> being open source at all.
> >
> >
> > On Aug 18, 2016 3:05 PM, "Tzeng, Nigel H."  wrote:
> >   On 8/18/16, 3:57 PM, "License-discuss on behalf of Lawrence Rosen"
> >    > lro...@rosenlaw.com>
> >   wrote:
> >
> >
> >   >Nigel Tzeng wrote:
> >   >> The issue here is for code that is potentially quite substantial.  
> > I
> >   >>would think that would be a different scenario.
> >   >
> >   >If I include the works of Shakespeare in my software, it would of 
> > course
> >   >be substantial and yet still be public domain almost everywhere (?).
> >
> >   If patents aren't a concern then okay.  Copyright lasts longer than
> >   patents so for anything that is in the public domain because of age 
> > then
> >   no patents would still apply.
> >
> >   There isn¹t a lot of code that has aged out.  Only code written 
> > between
> >   before 1963 and didn¹t get a renewal.
> >
> >   ___
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> >   License-discuss@opensource.org
> >
> > Caution-https://lists.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-
> > discuss
> >
> >
> >


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