Re: how to properly specify "Public Domain"?
On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Frank Küster wrote:
> JC Helary <jch.helary@free.fr> wrote:
> > Public domain is clearly defined in copyright law, and that should be
> > so in any country that has any kind of copyright law.
>
> I fear there are a couple of countries that didn't obey your
> "should".
>
> And all that doesn't answer my question: Whether it's debian-legal's
> consensus that "This file is in the public domain" grants us enough
> rights to distribute it in main, or non-free, or not at all.
We've generally considered it to give enough rights to distribute in
main, assuming the statement is clear that that's what it is doing.
An ideal situtation would be a statement that the work is in the
public domain, followed by a statement that it is licensed under MIT
(or similar) if that is not possible in the licensee's jurisdiction.
If you've got the time to communicate with the author to request that,
it'd be good. Otherwise, I don't believe the ftpmasters are requiring
this from public domain works yet.
Don Armstrong
--
"I'm a rational being--of a sort--rational enough, at least, to see the
symptoms of insanity around me. And I'm human, the same as the poeple
I think of as victims when my guard drops. It's at least possible I'm
even crazier than my fellows, whom I'm tempted to pity.
"There seems only one thing to do, and that's get drunk"
-- Chad C. Mulligan (John Brunner _Stand On Zanzibar p390)
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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