1CONTENTS 2 3 Public Domain Notice 4 Exceptions (for bundled 3rd-party code) 5 Copyright F.A.Q. 6 7 8============================================================== 9 PUBLIC DOMAIN NOTICE 10 National Center for Biotechnology Information 11 12With the exception of certain third-party files summarized below, this 13software is a "United States Government Work" under the terms of the 14United States Copyright Act. It was written as part of the authors' 15official duties as United States Government employees and thus cannot 16be copyrighted. This software is freely available to the public for 17use. The National Library of Medicine and the U.S. Government have not 18placed any restriction on its use or reproduction. 19 20Although all reasonable efforts have been taken to ensure the accuracy 21and reliability of the software and data, the NLM and the U.S. 22Government do not and cannot warrant the performance or results that 23may be obtained by using this software or data. The NLM and the U.S. 24Government disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including 25warranties of performance, merchantability or fitness for any 26particular purpose. 27 28Please cite the authors in any work or product based on this material. 29 30 31============================================================== 32EXCEPTIONS (in all cases excluding NCBI-written makefiles): 33 34See LICENSE from https://github.com/ncbi/ncbi-vdb 35 36============================================================== 37Copyright F.A.Q. 38 39 40-------------------------------------------------------------- 41Q. Our product makes use of the NCBI source code, and we made changes 42 and additions to that version of the NCBI code to better fit it to 43 our needs. Can we copyright the code, and how? 44 45A. You can copyright only the *changes* or the *additions* you made to the 46 NCBI source code. You should identify unambiguously those sections of 47 the code that were modified, e.g. by commenting any changes you made 48 in the code you distribute. Therefore, your license has to make clear 49 to users that your product is a combination of code that is public domain 50 within the U.S. (but may be subject to copyright by the U.S. in foreign 51 countries) and code that has been created or modified by you. 52 53-------------------------------------------------------------- 54Q. Can we (re)license all or part of the NCBI source code? 55 56A. No, you cannot license or relicense the source code written by NCBI 57 since you cannot claim any copyright in the software that was developed 58 at NCBI as a 'government work' and consequently is in the public domain 59 within the U.S. 60 61-------------------------------------------------------------- 62Q. What if these copyright guidelines are not clear enough or are not 63 applicable to my particular case? 64 65A. Contact us. Send your questions to 'sra-tools@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov'. 66 67