Greetings! In review of SPDX specification (spdx.org/), I'm not seeing a clear annotation for U.S. Public Domain. Could you please clarify if such a license currently exists and I have failed to understand or find it? Any links or clarification appreciated!
As a federal government employee involved with open source projects, I would like to understand if we can have a SPDX license for public domain or government works to better enable federal agencies to contribute code and make the licensing and copyright clear. There is currently an efforts to renew support for custom software code (sourcecode.cio.gov/)to ensure all government produced works are clearly promoted and licensing is required to be open source. Having a license targeted at public domain, or specifically referencing government contribution, might promote and encourage open source licensing. As you may be aware, for federal employees and most government agencies, the copyright is simply "This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Foreign rights may apply." that falls into the public domain. In terms of operational knowledge, that is also affected by the government contract with vendors, and how the rights are asserted and assumed. Reference: www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html; www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/dars/dfars/html/current/252227.htm. It seems this new initiative - although one could simply state it is related to government failing to clearly mark contracted works as public domain - is to specifically assign an open source license approach, to assert specific copyright as the law allows agencies to do for specific needs. In this case, I pull that rationale from the linked sites as the need to "enables Federal employees to work together-both within and across agencies-to reduce costs, streamline development, apply uniform standards, and ensure consistency in creating and delivering information.6<https://sourcecode.cio.gov/introduction/#fn6> Enhanced reuse of custom-developed code across the Federal Government can have significant benefits for American taxpayers, such as reducing Federal vendor lock-in,7<https://sourcecode.cio.gov/introduction/#fn7> decreasing duplicative costs for the same code, increasing transparency across the Federal Government, and minimizing the challenges associated with integrating large blocks of code from multiple sources." I'm happy to make a recommendation on the SPDX format, if you care to respond and let me know if there have been additional discussions on this topic to be considered, if an existing license is recommended, or if in review you agree there is a need for such a specification. Regards, Norman Robinson Section 508 Program Manager U.S. Department of State IRM/BMP/Governance, Resource, and Performance Management (GRP) SA-9 (American Red Cross Building) 2025 E Street, NW 4th Floor, Suite NE4026 Washington, DC robins...@state.gov<mailto:robins...@state.gov> (202) 634-0301 This email is UNCLASSIFIED.
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