Re: DFSG FAQ (draft)

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>

> In the answer to question 9 it might be worth noting the question of
> whether or not things can actually be released into the public
> domain.  My understanding is that debian-legal generally quietly
> re-interprets such claims as an extremely permissive license.

I think it depends on who on debian-legal you ask. I understand that
there are jurisdictions that do recognize explicit donations of
intellectual property to the public domain. In those, a statement
that "FOO is (in the) public domain" would be taken at face value,
and DFSG-freedom follows immediately.

There are other jurisdictions that do not have any systematic concept
of "public domain" - a count in one of those, would probably
reinterpret the statement as an extremely permissive license, with
much the same effect.

I have previously made a point of distinguising between these two
cases, but I'm not sure anymore that the distinction is relevant for
debian-legal's purpose.

-- 
Henning Makholm          "Also, the letters are printed. That makes the task
                        of identifying the handwriting much more difficult."