On Fri, 2021-08-27 at 16:45 +0000, Davide Cavalca wrote:
> On Thu, 2021-08-26 at 12:28 -0500, Bryan Sutula wrote:
> > On Thu, 2021-08-26 at 17:16 +0000, Davide Cavalca wrote:
> > > NIST Standard Reference Data (SRD);
> > >  ©Copyright [©YEAR] by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce on behalf of
> > > the
> > > United States of America. All rights reserved.
> > > ---
> > >
> > > To my untrained eye, this looks like a fairly standard copyright
> > > attribution thing and should be ok to redistribute and package in
> > > Fedora, but I'd like an official blessing as I don't see this license
> > > listed on
> > > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main
> > > 
> >
> > The phrase "all rights reserved" indicates that no permission has been
> > granted for anyone to make copies.  On the surface, we should not
> > redistribute this content.
> >
> > I am surprised, though, that publicly-funded work would be restricted.
> > Perhaps one of our attorneys could comment?
>
> So I'm definitely not an expert, but my understanding is that "All
> rights reserved" is just a copyright affirmation phrase, it doesn't
> actually restrict/impact redistribution in itself. If you look at
> https://github.com/search?q=%22All+rights+reserved%22 it's all over the
> place, even in projects under permissive licenses.

<distraction>
This Wikipedia article[1] does a good job explaining the "All rights
reserved".  You are correct that it no longer has actual significance
beyond the reminder that this is copyrighted content.  Thanks for
making me look this up and learn something today.
</distraction>

Given that the gov't has claimed a copyright and has (apparently) not
provided any permission to make copies, the default is that no such
permission exists and it should not be copied.  That's the nature of
"copyright".  I think we still need to find permission to make copies
(which would be in the form of an actual license stating that we are
allowed to do so), or failing that, perhaps an attorney might be able
to comment on whether there is some blanket permission for publicly-
funded content.

-Bryan

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_rights_reserved
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