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

[Alexander Terekhov]

Arnoud Engelfriet wrote:
> 
> 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.

I just wonder what is your take on the following piece of GNU wisdom 
and NASA OSA in general.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

<quote>

NASA Open Source Agreement 

The NASA Open Source Agreement, version 1.3, is not a free software 
license because it includes a provision requiring changes to be your 
“original creation”. Free software development depends on combining 
code from third parties, and the NASA license doesn't permit this.

We urge you not to use this license. In addition, if you are a United 
States citizen, please write to NASA and call for the use of a truly 
free software license.

</quote>

NASA OSA can be found here:

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/nasa1.3.php

regards,
alexander.