Re: Public domain Licence
On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 14:32:23 +0200
Alexandre Delanoë <alexandre@delanoe.org> wrote:
> 2015/08/28 14:22, Sven Bartscher:
> > On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 09:36:18 +0200
> > Alexandre Delanoë <anoe@debian.org> wrote:
> >
> > > Hello Sven,
> > > I am still thinking about the "public domain" issue.
> > >
> > > I think, before blocking any decision, I think I should contact
> > > the author upstream.
> > >
> > > I think I will propose him to chose a licence, maybe CC0 or BSD
> > > but I need to understand the german legal context you mentioned
> > > yesterday. Do you have more information about that ?
> >
> > For reference about issues in the past, with public domain packages,
> > you can look at the history of haskell-setlocale:
> >
> > REJECT message from ftp-master:
> > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-haskell-maintainers/2014-July/020271.html
> >
> > Following discussion (on different mailing list, so in different
> > archive...):
> > https://lists.debian.org/debian-haskell/2014/07/msg00007.html
> >
> > To the more general problem:
> >
> > As I understand the underlying legal problem, which isn't very good,
> > because it's hard to find information about it, some jurisdictions,
> > like the US American, allow to give away your copyright on a work
> > to someone else. Most explanations of this only mention giving your
> > copyright to someone else, but I guess giving up the copyright
> > completely, thus placing the work in the public domain, is a similar
> > case.
> >
> > The German law just defines the copyright holder ("Urheber") as the
> > person who created the work. There is no way to give it away or
> > give it up. If you created it, it's your's for live and 70 years
> > afterwards. The only thing you can give away are rights on how to
> > use your work, either by using a public license (that applies for
> > everyone) or through exclusive usage agreements with individuals
> > but you stay the copyright holder for the time mentioned above.
> >
> > But please note, that I don't understand the issue very well and if
> > giving up your copyright ownership, is the same case as giving it to
> > someone else.
> >
> > Most of the information above was concluded from comparison of these
> > two Wikipedia articles:
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Germany
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Transfers_and_licenses
>
> Thanks
>
> >
> > If this is unsatisfactory, we could also ask the question on
> > debian-legal@lists.d.o.
> >
> > PS: Please ask such questions on the public mailing list, if
> > possible! That way more people, who might know more about the issue
> > than me, can answer too and we might get a better answer.
> > If you're okay with it, I would like to send a copy of our
> > preceding discussion, to the mailing list.
>
> Sure, no pb.
Here some discussion, Alexandre and me had.
Posting it to the list now, so everyone else can read it.
Regards
Sven
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