Re: Public domain and DEP-5-compliant debian/copyright
Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr> writes:
> It has been established by the mavens from this list that the
> copyright statements contradict the "public domain" assertion, and
> that simply stating "This program is in the public domain" is not
> enough to make it so in general.
I've been a primary proponent of that point of view, and I think it's
probably correct. But I wouldn't claim it's *established*; no qualified
legal expert has said anything so definite here, I believe.
Rather, I think such a declaration is not established to be an effective
divestment of copyright in all the jurisdictions where Debian recipients
operate, and the risk to them is unacceptable — especially because it's
quite easy for the copyright holder to correctly apply a known simple
free-software license that grants all the relevant permissions.
> So, under the assumption that I don't hear from the original author
> soon enough, is it necessary to artificially rewrite these examples to
> use different English sentences, or are the original parts too trivial
> to be copyrightable in the first place?
I wouldn't want to assert whether a judge might consider some work too
trivial to be covered by copyright. If you think it's an easy task, it's
certainly safer to replace them if you want to relicense.
But there are also established examples of successfully relicensing
works without getting explicit permission from every copyright holder of
every portion of the work. So that's an option to explore also.
> Thanks for taking the time to read me!
I hope you can get a legally-qualified opinion to help you with these
questions. Thank you for taking seriously the legal freedom of Debian
recipients.
--
\ “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our |
`\ inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter |
_o__) the state of facts and evidence.” —John Adams, 1770-12-04 |
Ben Finney
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