Re: Re: how to properly specify "Public Domain"?
frank@debian.org wrote:
> And all that doesn't answer my question: Whether it's debian-legal's
> consensus that "This file is in the public domain" grants us enough
> rights to distribute it in main, or non-free, or not at all.
It's good enough, if it's placed there by the author/former copyright holder.
We prefer "The author of this file places this file in the public domain,"
to make it clear that this wasn't just slapped on by some other random person
who didn't understand copyright law (since that's an occasional problem).
It's not clear that it's actually legally possible to place something in the
public domain in the United States. :-P If it isn't, however, we suspect
that courts would interpret the statement of the author's intent to place the
file in the public domain, to mean that the author granted permission to
everyone in the world to treat it as if it were in the public domain. (Which
is sufficient.)
If the author wants to be really careful, he should write:
"The author of this file places this file in the public domain. If that is
legally impossible, the author grants an irrevocable license to anyone and
everyone to treat this file exactly as if it were in the public domain."
That's my preferred "Public Domain" specification.
--
Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>
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