05-15-2020, 10:03 PM
Yeah, getting license changes when dealing with orgs of this size is a very tall order. I've considered a similar problem with the license of OpenSees, an earthquake engineering simulation software. Developed at UC Berkeley, you'd think they'd eat their own dogfood so to speak and use the BSD license, but no.
Anyway, since most people would think of reasonable solutions to this, I can share an unreasonable one that came to mind. In a sense, the problem is the NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3, but for us it's manifesting as a NASTRAN-95 problem. So, while it might be easier to go after a relicensing of NASTRAN-95 to the MIT license, there's existing momentum [1] for fixing the problem of NASA OSA 1.3 itself. And as for a solution to that problem, it seems very appropriately NASA-esque to me to suggest a release an updated NASA OSA 1.4, which states in appropriate legalese that its license its equivalent to the MIT license.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Open_...ite_note-7
Anyway, since most people would think of reasonable solutions to this, I can share an unreasonable one that came to mind. In a sense, the problem is the NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3, but for us it's manifesting as a NASTRAN-95 problem. So, while it might be easier to go after a relicensing of NASTRAN-95 to the MIT license, there's existing momentum [1] for fixing the problem of NASA OSA 1.3 itself. And as for a solution to that problem, it seems very appropriately NASA-esque to me to suggest a release an updated NASA OSA 1.4, which states in appropriate legalese that its license its equivalent to the MIT license.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Open_...ite_note-7