Re: US Govt Licensing (was licensing)

>>      b)  Should you or others visitors to your site wish to use the
>> software you developed for the Board, or any portion thereof, in their
>> own software program, if the new software program (which integrates U.S.
>> Government software) is ever copyrighted, it should include a
>> publication notice indicating which portions of the program belong to the
>> United States Government.  According to the United States Copyright 
>> Office
>> (http://www.loc.gov/copyright):
Ok, so here is a question I have wondered about for some time.
Is the following true.  Anyone has the right to copy, modify and
republish the SW using either a proprietary or Free license.  So,
you could copy the program. modify it in some relatively straightforward
way, and release the result under the GPL.  How extensive would
the modification have to be?  Would simply reformatting it with
some different formatting conventions be sufficient, or would
one have to really add significant value.  The first probably is
not sufficient, but adding some functionality might be possible.

For that matter, could Someone simply grab the sources and slap
a GPL notice on them.  Then the GPL'd sources would be copyright
Someone, though it would belong to the US Government.  The
resulting tangle of copyright and ownership might be just enough
to put anyone off of trying to take it private again.

-- 
Codex Gratia Codici	   http://www.haveyounoshame.org
Bill White                 [email protected]
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