On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 05:22:54PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: > Your main point seems to be that, apart from some fringe cases (people > misusing the term as if it were equivalent to "shareware"), there's no > serious dispute as to what "public domain" means. More or less, yes. > > You're lucky to almost always deal with knowledgeable people! :-) > > In my own experience, I've heard the term "public domain" used and > abused in every possible (and impossible) meaning... > [...] > but I've heard (misinformed) people abusing the term as if it meant: > > * freeware > * shareware > * free software (e.g.: "Linux is in the public domain" [sic]) > * published on the web or more generally on the Internet (e.g.: "I > found it on the Internet, hence it's in the public domain" [sic]) > * gratuitously obtained > * ... These all were implicitly included in the caveat I made. The key test is whether a court of law would decide that I did not mean the dictionary definition of the term AND that any reasonable person would realize that. I do not think it is that bad yet. I fully agree that an established license is generally a good idea. However, there are situations where you really want a oneliner; the one I gave is the best one I've been able to devise (or seen written by others), and is unambiguous to anyone who knows the relevant terminology. (Somehow this discussion reminds me of Guy Steele's "Growing a Language".) -- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/
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