Tom Callaway <tcallawa@redhat.com> writes: >On 09/07/2011 03:30 PM, Karl Fogel wrote: >> Which part of my answer wasn't correct, by the way? > >Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_of_the_United_States_Government > >It is far more complicated than your statement that "When U.S. >Government employees write software on government time, it is public >domain by law; they need make no disclaimer of rights, it's just >automatically so." I've read that page before (and other similar resources), thanks. I'm still not seeing the incorrect part of my mail, hence my request for help. I mean, I didn't include the "as part of their official duties" part, because in an active thread there's no point making my post as long as a Wikipedia article. My point is simply that there are some works whose public domain status is unambiguous. (The government has apparently asserted that the statute is only about domestic copyright, but that doesn't appear in the actual text of the law, and I'm not sure if the assertion has been tested in any meaningful way.) I know of at least two programs that are intended to be in the public domain and open source; I'm sure there are others. Although I don't think many people even know about our "alternate" FAQ at http://ideas.opensource.org/wiki/help/opensource, I don't think what we say there is as useful as it could be, although the advice to use a real license is good. But note that for the U.S. Government, sometimes there literally is no option to use a license! They *can't*, by law, if no contractors were involved and the software was written by government employees as part of their official duties, etc, etc. You see the problem... Best, -Karl