No repository-level license, inconsistent licensing per file

[d-diaz]

There is no license defined for this repository nor for most of the files in it. The public domain status is indicated by the FMSC website, but is confusing given the absence of a statement in this repo and conflicting claims in the code published here. Perhaps a public domain notice is justified similar in spirit to the way the FVS tab for Contributing mentions the GSA 18F policy?

Several files which contain comments regarding authorship (most associated with Flewelling) and f_west.f contains two explicit assertions of individual copyright without any additional terms granting rights for modification, distribution, etc., but which also appear to have been modified subsequently.

sf_zero.f contains a copyright attributed to Language Systems immediately followed by inline comments indicating modifications by other authors.

Other files include copyright assertions for assembly by USDA Forest Service in 2010 and 2011, which seems to mismatch public domain status of work by federal employees being in public domain rather then protected by copyright held by a public agency.

Considering this codebase is used widely within USFS and repackaged and distributed as a component of the Forest Vegetation Simulator, it would be ideal to clearly establish public domain status of all code in this repo including any contributions.

[d-diaz]

I’d be happy to prepare a PR with a CC0 Public Domain license following the example set by IRS in the past year. It is the same license referred to by the FVS repo, but without any references to the now-defunct GSA 18F program.

[kcormier23]

We chatted about this yesterday as a staff. The copyright material from Jim Flewelling was an agreement between us not to share his code for 10 years, which we abided by. This agreement expired in 2004 making all the code in the public domain but we kept the his comments in the original code. I will have to dig for the documentation on this as it is in my office which I am not currently working in due to an HVAC fire this summer. No word on when we will move back in. Given that, we were talking about using the same Public Domain license we use with National Cruise but given the wider scope of this code, I think we will take you up on your offer to prepare a PR with a CC0 Public Domain license. Thanks!

[d-diaz]

It looks like NatCruise license is CC0 and has a helpful preamble about origination in federal government. I think it makes sense to use that and I can duplicate that in the PR.

With the PR, I can adjust the Flewelling authorship and copyright notice to read:

c***********************************************************************
c                      Coefficients for NW TAPER Coop  April, 1994
c                         (REGN  CD17.coe)
c                       Copyright  J. W. Flewelling, 1994 
c
c              NOTE ON PUBLIC RELEASE: 
c              Per the original author agreement, the 10-year proprietary 
c              holding period has expired. This legacy code has been 
c              released into the Public Domain by the maintaining agency.
c***********************************************************************

And I can update the language systems copyright comment like:

c           Finds the zero of a univariate single precision function  SF_ZERO
c           Adopted from SZERO found in MATH77 Subr Library of
c               Language Systems   Sterling, VA.
c      
c           Code is Copyright by Language Systems.
c           Source, object and executable MAY be distributed with SF_TEST.
c
c           HISTORICAL NOTE (2026 Review): Language Systems Corp. ceased 
c           independent operations and was acquired by Fortner Research in 
c           May 1996. This legacy file is retained under its original 
c           permissive distribution terms ("MAY be distributed").

The only additional think that I think would be valuable in this set of changes would be to include a statement in a new CONTRIBUTING.md that mentions that contributions to this repo will also enter the public domain, and the act of submitting the contribution indicates acceptance of that release. Here is an example I’d propose we copy. If at some point in the future y’all want to offer more contribution guidelines, this file could then be elaborated (for example, any testing or build evidence you might want included with proposed code changes, like something similar to this example).

[kcormier23]

This all looks good to us. Thanks for the effort. We appreciate your assistance with this.