[Fedora-legal-list] And another license

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sat, 2008-05-24 at 07:12 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Fri, 23 May 2008 21:07:02 -0400
> "Jon Stanley" <jonstanley at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > This looks possibly MIT-ish to me.  Can someone confirm?  (this is for scrip)
> > 
> > !     Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 the Regents of the University of
> > !       California.
> > !
> > !     Unless otherwise indicated, this software has been authored
> > !     by an employee or employees of the University of California,
> > !     operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract
> > !     No. W-7405-ENG-36 with the U.S. Department of Energy.  The U.S.
> > !     Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this
> > !     software.  The public may copy and use this software without
> > !     charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship
> > !     are reproduced on all copies.  Neither the Government nor the
> > !     University makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes
> > !     any liability or responsibility for the use of this software.
> 
> The public isn't explicitly granted the right to modify.

From my time there, my understanding was that code created and published
by the U.S. government (or contractors under hire to do so) is public
domain, and the government isn't allowed to deny the public the right to
modify code it produces.  This probably bears a closer look and some
communication to see if someone just mistakenly slapped a license text
on it to be open-sourcey.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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