Re: Sapphire.cpp -- Gpl compatible? DFSG-free?
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> This is no guarantee against the author later realising they still hold
> copyright, changing their mind on their generosity, and enforcing their
> copyright on those who have violated that copyright.
>
> More significantly, it is no guarantee against *some other party* later
> realising they have (by whatever means) obtained the original author's
> copyrights, and deciding to enforce them. In other words, this
> assumption fails the “Tentacles of Evil” test.
>
> Far better would be to convince the upstream that despite their
> attempts, they still do hold copyright, and for them to explicitly grant
> license under extremely-permissive terms like those of Expat
> <URL:http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt>.
Whilst they might technically still hold copyright, I wonder if a
court would consider a statement like 'Dedicated to the public domain'
to be an all-permissive licence grant, given the common English
meaning of the phrase. Probably hasn't been tested in court.
--
Andrew Donnellan <>< andrew[at]donnellan[dot]name
http://andrew.donnellan.name ajdlinux[at]gmail[dot]com
http://linux.org.au subkeys.pgp.net 0x5D4C0C5
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