ORI has made its public technical data – all software, schematics, designs, and other information contained at https://www.openresearch.institute/public/ available for unlimited distribution at the 2018 Cal Poly Cubesat Developers Conference, in compliance with ITAR 121.11(a)(6).
ITAR 121.11 does not explicitly state that making data available on the Internet places that data in the “public domain” (their wording) – although we believe any court would consider this to be so.? Instead, it gives a number of methods including unlimited distribution at a conference, and making the data available at a public library (most of which do provide web access, and thus we believe this requirement is satisfied by internet data).
Notices of the availability of our online data were posted in several locations at the conference and on the conference’s online discussion system. WiFi and cellular data were available at the conference for the attendees to explore or download our information.
“Public domain” information, in the context of ITAR, is information available to the public, rather than the copyright sense of “public domain” which means information for which copyrights have been abandoned. ORI and its volunteers generally retain copyright on their information, but it is placed under an Open Source license which grants a set of rights including use, modification, and redistribution to the general public.