Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!rochester!cornell!ken
From: ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach
Subject: Re: DOC export licenses
Message-ID: <43516@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 19 Jul 90 00:54:47 GMT
References: <43447@cornell.UUCP> <4195@graphite18.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Reply-To: ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
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In article <4195@graphite18.UUCP> motcid!mellman@uunet.uu.net writes:
>Do I understand that correctly?  Are you saying that projects that the
>public pays for can be copyrighted by private individuals for profit?
>Sounds like Reagan-era shanangans to me.  That would call for a letter
>to my representative (for whatever that's worth).

Right.  NSF and DARPA are no longer allowed to force software into the
public domain -- nor do they hold copyrights on books or papers you write
under a grant.  Similarly, an artist retains rights to art produced under
public funding.  Universities sometimes set things up to hold the rights
themselves, but Cornell does not do this unless you make unusual use of
University resources (i.e. a gene database or something). Basically,
a computer program is being treated as an intellectual work that can
be protected by copyright just as for most other such works.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think I have this straight.  

We are, however, required to disclose our software or whatever -- but
this is not the same as not holding copyright on it.  That is, I am
required to permit you to have a copy of, say, ISIS in the state it was
in at the time I went off NSF or DARPA funding, but because I would hold
the copyright I can also limit, under copyright law, the uses to which
you can put the system (or reproduce it, or modify it).  Technically,
I think the situation is that we have to disclose our work to the
government, which must disclose it to you under the Freedom of Information
Act.  So, you can get at a copy.  But, this doesn't change the copyright
status of that copy, and so you are subject to any limitations I might
want to put on it.

Obviously, NSF and DARPA are not required to renew funding when they
are unhappy about what a project ends up doing.  However, both organizations
tend to want to see "technology transition" plans these days.  Another
popular program is called SBIR; under this, all Federal funding agencies
reserve of their funding to help small businesses develop products.
You can get up to $550k specifically to develop a product -- of public
money.  

Although I see that this bothers you, I guess that it bothers me less than
to read about huge cost overruns on multi-billion dollar secret projects
that were contracted out under sole-source contracts and never produce
a single spin-off that might benefit the US economy or impact our day to
day working environment... that stuff is usually not very public either,
although I have no idea who gets the copyright on the software involved.

My guess is that you haven't really given a lot of thought to this whole
issue, since the current public policy is actually fairly consistent on
intellectual property issues and also pretty reasonable.  And, realistically,
the government can't pay for development, distribution and support for
large software systems indefinitely.  Letting someone make money by 
extending and supporting something that originated through publically
supported research makes a lot of sense, as long as the system is
publically available as of the end of the funding in a way that lets others
learn from what has been done...  

(By the way, we give away ISIS, in source form, free.  And, Rick gives
away the Mach kernel, also in source form, free.  So, even if we aren't
compelled to do so, both groups are certainly making their software
accessible.  However, the ISIS group has started to release the system
under a copyright notice to protect our rights in the event that we might
elect to develop a commercial version of the system later.)

Ken Birman