Re: [sdcc-devel] Licensing and building from real source
Steve Langasek schrieb:
> On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 01:53:58PM +0200, Michael Below wrote:
>
>
>> Am Mi 11 Jul 2007 13:07:03 CEST
>> schrieb Bas Wijnen <wijnen@debian.org>:
>>
>>>> The ASxxxx assemblers and the ASLINK relocating linker
>>>> are placed in the Public Domain. Publication or distribution of
>>>> these programs for non-commercial use is hereby granted with
>>>> the stipulation that the copyright notice be included with all
>>>> copies.
> To my understanding, the above doesn't put the work in the Public Domain
> because German law doesn't recognize the author's ability to *put* works in
> the Public Domain.
>
That's true, the author keeps his Urheberrecht in german law, declaring
something as Public Domain is understood as an unrestricted general
license.
But thats's not the point I wanted to make. The text we are discussing
uses the legal term Public Domain in the context of a license, granting
certain rights under certain restrictions. This doesn't fit with the US
legal concept of Public Domain. But it does fit with a layman's
understanding of Public Domain as a license saying "everybody may use
it", with a condition added on top.
I think it is necessary to interpret this paragraph as a whole, asking
what the author wanted to tell us. It is one statement, and it makes
sense as one statement, if you allow for the fact that the author of
this license might have been not a lawyer.
> It's still a contradiction though, as Bas says, and it would be ideal to
> have this ambiguity cleared up.
>
In the end I agree, I does make sense to contact the licensor, to
relicense this under a better license, maybe 3-clause BSD or something
like that.
Michael Below
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