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Re: DEP5: Public domain works



On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 05:03:22PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
we maybe should say something about not using the public-domain keyword for things that aren't actually in the public domain but just have a license saying "this is in the public domain" or "you can treat this as if it's in the public domain," since in many countries that use Debian those works are *not* in the public domain.

Ok, I think I get it now.

The following was dropped in Bazaar revision 135[1]:

Being in the public domain is not a license. See Linux journal article ["Why the Public Domain Isn't a License"](http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6225) by Lawrence Rosen. If the work is truly public domain, this should be stated in the copyright field.

Would adding that back somewhere be suitable?

Personally I would really appreciate if it was a helpful note, not just a limiting one like "don't use this tag unless you really know what it means - and don't trust upstream to know either".


 - Jonas

[1]http://bzr.debian.org/scm/loggerhead/dep/dep5/trunk/revision/135/dep5.mdwn

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 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
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