[Fedora-legal-list] NIST "license"

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 04/09/2009 12:09 PM, Jerry James wrote:
> Re: the recent speech recognition thread on Fedora-devel, I am looking
> at packaging up a few tools from http://www.nist.gov/speech/tools/,
> SPHERE in particular.  However, the distribution contains no mention
> of a license.  A query about this was answered with a pointer to this
> page:
> 
> http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/disclaim.htm
> 
> which says, "These World Wide Web pages are provided as a public
> service by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
> With the exception of material marked as copyrighted, information
> presented on these pages is considered public information and may be
> distributed or copied. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits
> is requested."
> 
> The SPHERE source distribution contains a directory, src/lib/sp, which
> does contain code with copyright and license statements.  However,
> this is code that was written outside of NIST and appears to be
> released under a variety of open source licenses.  I will do a
> thorough audit of that directory before proceeding.  Assuming that
> audit turns up no problems, what do you think of NIST's statement
> above?  Since the code they wrote contains no copyright statements,
> are they declaring it public domain?  I can ask for more information
> if necessary, but I'd appreciate a hand with crafting the questions if
> so.

NIST's statement above seems to only apply to their "World Wide Web
pages". They're not declaring it public domain either, they're granting
explicit rights to distribute and copy. It is notably more complicated
to put something in the Public Domain in the US, so it safe to assume
that no code that you might come across is in the Public Domain. When in
doubt, ask.
(There are some notable cases where we accept that code is in the Public
Domain, such as sqlite and SELinux, but they're corner cases.)

Now, if they say that that "license" applies to all code offered on
their website that they are the copyright holder, it would still not be
acceptable in Fedora, because they did not give us the right to modify
code. (They didn't disclaim warranty either, but that's just stupidity
on their part.) I strongly suspect that this license does not apply to
their copyrighted code, due to the way it is worded.

~spot

P.S. Jerry, I almost didn't see your post because it got caught in the
mailman spam trap. This mailing list is reasonably low-traffic, perhaps
you should subscribe? :)