Re: What is public domain? Was: Re: wdm on debian??

[Jens Ritter <jens@weh.rwth-aachen.de>]

"Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@efis.ucr.ac.cr> writes:

> Guys, what exactly *is* public domain? Is public domain DFSG-ok? Gene (whom
> I'm Cc'ing here) is the author of wdm, a nice looking login panel (xdm
> derivative). He would like to include some pictures taken with the Hubble
> Space Telescope (HST) as possible backgrounds for wdm. The images (some of
> you may know them, the so-called "Pillars" [1]) are in the public domain
> according to GSFC. Can those images, without NASA's written permission, be
> distributed on a cd-rom?

public domain means nobody has a copyright on the 
images. So no license issues, no bothering when you copy them. 

If you place something in the public domain you deliberately give up
any rights you might have had by preparing it.

Jens

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Jens.Ritter@weh.rwth-aachen.de       grimaldi@debian.org
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