[Fedora-legal-list] And another license

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Sun, 2008-06-01 at 20:59 -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:

> 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.

Contractors are exempt from this. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_of_the_United_States_Government#Works_produced_by_contractors

The good news is that this license has been revised several times, and
the latest incarnation is Free and GPLv2/v3 compatible. See:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/SCRIP

License: SCRIP

Thanks,

~spot