Re: Licensing Question: Public Domain?

[cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)]

Mark Johnson <mark@phy.duke.edu> wrote:
>I'm planning to package Norm Walsh's (aka Mr. DocBook) java catalog
>classes he wrote while working at Arbortext. The license simply says
>it's public domain (see below).
>
>Don't we need something that explicitly says we can redistribute this
>software? 

See
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#PublicDomainSoftware>.
"Public domain" means that the software is not copyrighted in the sense
that nobody has any special rights over it (as distinct from a
copyrighted work with no copyright notice, which means nothing is
permitted), and you may use it freely.

It's fine for Debian.

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]