how to properly specify "Public Domain"?

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Hi,

Summary:

If there's a file in one of my packages that only declares to be in the
public domain, do I have to contact the author and let him clarify this,
or can I leave things as they are?


I recall to have been told that, in order to make a piece of software
free, it is not sufficient to say "This file is in the public domain",
but that instead one has to write something like "Everybody is free to
use, distribute and/or modify it".

On the other hand, I have learned meanwhile that in some legislations
the term Public Domain does indeed have a defined meaning.  From this I
would conclude that declaring something "Public Domain" should be
sufficient, and that effectively no court could sanely assert a
copyright infringement if someone used a file on that basis, even when
the term doesn't have a well-defined meaning there - at least if the
copyright holder is from a country where it has.

Regards, Frank

-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)