Re: [Fsfe-uk] UK Govt. OSS Policy v2

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2004-08-10 at 20:34 +0100, Martin Wheeler wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > I've been told we cannot redistribute the redraft.
> 
> That's interesting -- because in the document itself, the only text
> referring to restriction in distribution says:

<snip Crown copyright>

Yeah, I know. 

I'm not totally sure how this works out: technically, everything the
Civil Service publishes is copyright the Crown; however, this document
hasn't been published publicly yet. I strongly suspect there wouldn't be
a genuine legal reason for not giving people copies of this: obviously,
if the copyright states one thing, they can't retract it.

However, I did ask them specifically, and it was stressed to me that it
should not be circulated. So, out of politeness (if not anything else)
I'm refraining from distributing the document - luckily the document is
still available from other sources :o)

I have heard from a number of people who I thought were participating in
the consultation; I haven't heard from anyone who received a copy of
this document. While there isn't anything totally earth-shattering in
it, I really don't understand why they can't consult more widely. I
would bet that they basically don't want to do a formal consultation;
they just want to get this thing out of the door. I would like to know
who did get copies of this though - if anyone knows, I would be
interested ;)

Cheers,

Alex.