On [03/12/02 10:52], Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 08:56:57AM +0100, Christian Kurz wrote:
> > > Although technically not a license, I believe the above statement is
> > > sufficient to place the code in question in the public domain. This
> > > means that there is no longer a copyright on the software at all
> > > (copyright has been waived), and therefore no license is necessary.
> > > Public-domain software is DFSG-free.
> > Oh, so what would need to be changed to make this text a license itself?
> > The upstream author wouldn't mind changing the current license text if
> > someone finds more appropriate words or discoveres
> > mistakes/problems/etc. His main concern is that the code should be
> > public domain and it's license shouldn't be more restrictive compared
> > to the 'license' (or lack of it) for DJB's cdb. So if you or someone
> > else has suggestion for change, please tell me and I'll get in touch
> > with the upstream author to change the license.
> If a license is what is desired, then the text should explicitly grant us
> all the rights that we require under the DFSG. The BSD license is
> probably the simplest form of this. But again, public-domain software is
> DFSG-free: if software is in the public domain, there is no copyright
> holder who can withhold any rights from us.
Well, in the first version, the package was simply having the following
copyright information:
|tinycdb shares no code with the above two packages, it was
|written from scratch by Michael Tokarev, who placed all the
|code to public domain.
And the files in the source code all contained this text.
| * This file is a part of tinycdb package by Michael Tokarev, mjt@corpit.ru.
| * Public domain.
So lintian complained about no license being available and I asked him
to provide a copyright file. He told me then that he doesn't care about
the license at all and wants to simply share the code. I suggested then
using something like the PARTY-WARE or BEER-WARE license (as named on
debian-devel). Then he came up with the license text that I cited in the
start of this discussion. Since I wasn't sure if the text would qualify
as DSFG-free and be acceptable, I suggest to contact debian-legal to
figure this out. So Michael (and neither I ;-) wouldn't mind changing
the current license text to something else to keep the code in public
domain. So would having a copyright file saying the code is public
domain be enough?
Christian
--
Debian Developer (http://www.debian.org)
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