Michael Warnecke, NASA Will Become First Agency to Get OSI Certification of Open Source Agreement, BNA Electronic Commerce & Law Report , March 31, 2004. In the U.S., software and research produced by government employees is not copyrightable. That's good news for the free exchange of software and research. But open-source licenses typically require copyright-holder consent, not the public domain. So how can goverment-produced software use those licenses? After some legal analysis, NASA has decided that while its software cannot be copyrighted, it can be licensed, and it will take advantage of this fact to release its software under open-source licenses. This strategy depends on some court rulings that state contract law, which governs licenses, is not preempted by federal statutes, which govern copyright. My take: it's good news that NASA software will be released as open-source, but bad news that other agencies might use less generous licenses to control downstream use of their uncopyrightable content. And despite its effects on open-source software, I still believe that federal preemption would be better than the lack of federal preemption for open-access research.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/05/2004 10:54:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
