Re: GPLv3 comedy unfolding -- InformationWeek: "Pick Your Open Source Poison: Microsoft's Patent Claims Or GPLv3"

[Arnoud Engelfriet]

On 2007-06-10, Lee Hollaar <hollaar@antitrust.cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> But the thing I was thinking about if the House bill had passed was that
> any contribution by a government contractor (like a university research
> project) would be in the public domain.  How might that affect the GPL,
> and if it did, would it mean the loss of a great source of GPLed works?

Why would it affect the GPL?

I don't see why the GPL is a special case here. The hypothetical
situation would be that a government contractor publishes a work
indicating it is licensed under license X. However a law provides
that this kind of work is public domain. The net result would be
that the license statement is void and hence irrelevant.

At the same time, a private citizen can publish creative works 
and license them under license X. The law above is irrelevant
to his situation.

Arnoud

-- 
Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch & European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself
Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/