On Thu, 17 May 2012 11:07:05 -0600 AJ ONeal <[email protected]> wrote:
> My coworker found some code online we want to use for positioning > with gps and magnetic declination data. I take it this is for converting a "true" course (which is what GPS gives you) to a magnetic course, suitable for magnetic compass applications such as small boats and light aircraft. > > It contains no license and was found publicly available on some site > of an organization of the federal government (noa.gov). I get no "noa.gov" on the web or in whois, so I suspect that is a typo for "noaa.gov", which is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or "noah" for short. > Under U.S. law, source code which is written by employees of the > federal government is non-copyright (see wikipedia). Citation? > > Does anyone know if non-copyright is the same as public domain? > Is it otherwise compatible with open source licenses? > Is it otherwise compatible with commercial licenses? They are not the same. "Public domain" means that something is old enough that any copyrights have expired, e.g. the King James bible. A lot of people mistakenly release things to the public domain, which is effectively giving permission to copy, reuse, etc. at will. "Non-copyright" means what it says, the author refuses to copyright a work. They have much the same practical effect. > > I'm pretty sure that the government intended it to be used by > companies like us to improve upon and sell it back to them bundled > with our product so I don't see an issue or need to get in touch with > our lawyer about it. You may be correct. NASA has a program for commercializing NASA technology, which is where its monthly Tech Briefs publication comes from. Need a *thorough* 6502 assembly language memory test? However, I would scrounge around the NOAA web site and see if there is an explicit grant of use on the site. If so, I'd document where I got the code, and include the text and source URL of the grant of use. > I'm just curious. When I use someone else's code, I prefer to be more than curious, I prefer to be sure. Would you care to make the code available? I expect others could use it. -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
