Re: [jats-list] Re: future of Preview XSLT

Subject: Re: [jats-list] Re: future of Preview XSLT
From: Kevin Hawkins <kevin.s.hawkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:14:18 -0400
Good news indeed.

To be less elliptical about my concerns about copyright that I mentioned in a previous message, I'm concerned about the copyright status of Preview XSLT. While http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/tools/tools.html says "All of the tools described on this page are in the public domain", I'm not so sure that is technically true. First of all, XSLT code, like other software code, receives copyright protection in the US. If the tools were created by US government employees during the course of their work, then they would be in the public domain the US. But if they were created by a contractor for a US government agency, then the contractor owns the copyright. It's not clear under US copyright law that anyone can renounce their copyright, despite Creative Commons offering a "deed" to that effect.

So, in short, I would prefer if a statement about who produced these (a federal agency or someone else) and, if someone else, if a license were attached to each of these tools explaining what may be done with them.

Thanks,

Kevin

On 10/5/2012 12:29 PM, Wendell Piez wrote:
Dear Jeff,

This is excellent news about your plans to release the Preview
stylesheets on Github.

Kevin raised the interesting question of whether there are any IP
restrictions (due to explicit or implicit copyrights to the work) that
would hinder or prevent forking and then distributing modifications.
Can you comment on that?

Thanks,
Wendell

Current Thread