I do note that the US Digital Services web design standards references CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication; github.com/18F/web-design-standards
This is very close to Universal Permissive License v1.0 UPL-1.0 : spdx.org/licenses/UPL-1.0.html in intent, although I have concerns the community at large won't use it unless they see "placed in the public domain under government contract" or "United States Government works" (17 U.S. Code ยง 105; www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105). While it could be argued UPL or public domain or CC0 1.0 (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) (SPDX CC0-1.0) does that, I believe citing the reasoning it is public domain, because it is a US Government work, will be most important to agencies who are also trying to communicate they deliberately and with intent placed it is the public domain, versus someone making the claim they were working on the project, had a copy, or assert it wasn't work for hire, or covered by contract agreement on a government contract. Otherwise we will have to teach the community to use SPDX CC0-1.0 and use project documentation along the lines of: This project is in the public domain This project is in the worldwide public domain<https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/blob/18f-pages-staging/LICENSE.md>. As stated in CONTRIBUTING<https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/blob/18f-pages-staging/CONTRIBUTING.md>: This project is in the public domain within the United States, and copyright and related rights in the work worldwide are waived through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication<https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>. All contributions to this project will be released under the CC0 dedication. By submitting a pull request, you are agreeing to comply with this waiver of copyright interest. Is CC0-1.0 sufficient or do we consider the merits for "SPDX USCode105-1.0" or "SPDX US-Public-1.0" to help agencies and contracted vendors document their intent and license - or lack of license - that always confuses me! -----Original Message----- From: Philippe Ombredanne [mailto:pombreda...@nexb.com] Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 10:03 AM To: Robinson, Norman Cc: spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org Subject: Re: Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) specification for Public Domain, Government Works? Possible New License/Exception Request On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 7:19 PM, Robinson, Norman <robins...@state.gov> wrote: > 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: > http://redirect.state.sbu/?url=www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyrigh > t.html; > http://redirect.state.sbu/?url=www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/dars/dfars/html/cu > rrent/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 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 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." This is awesome! > 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. This would be great and makes a lot of sense to me. Getting this as a license in the list would mean consistency and simplicity both for the agencies releasing code and for their recipients. I have seen various ways Federal agencies handle this such as the NIST in [1] (ignoring the funny Untied States typo). At the minimum I would in much favor to have a license identifier for a generic dedication to the public domain beyond the existing Creative Commons CC0. Alternatively I have seen projects use a choice of a custom dedication or CC0 such as in [2]. This helps deal with some countries (Germany? ) that do not recognize public domain and is not incompatible with having an id. Legal mavens, what's your take? [1] http://redirect.state.sbu/?url=https://java.net/projects/jsip/sources/svn/content/trunk/src/gov/nist/javax/sdp/MediaDescriptionImpl.java?rev=2364 [2] http://redirect.state.sbu/?url=https://github.com/search?q=cc0+public+domain+jurisdiction&type=Code -- Cordially Philippe Ombredanne This email is UNCLASSIFIED.
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