Re: DEP5: Public domain works

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi> writes:

> On ti, 2011-01-18 at 17:03 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > I'm happy to see public domain added as a license keyword.
>
> This is the consensus, it seems. Would anyone like to suggest a patch
> to implement it?

Here's my proposal:

=== modified file 'dep5.mdwn'
--- dep5.mdwn   2011-01-19 05:22:03 +0000
+++ dep5.mdwn   2011-01-19 09:45:59 +0000
@@ -389,6 +389,7 @@

 [[!table data="""
 **keyword** | **meaning**
+`public-domain` | No license required for any purpose; the work is not
 subject to copyright in any jurisdiction.
 `Apache`       | Apache license
 [1.0](http://spdx.org/licenses/ASL-1.0),
 [2.0](http://spdx.org/licenses/ASL-2.0).
 `Artistic`     | Artistic license
 [1.0](http://spdx.org/licenses/Artistic-1.0),
 [2.0](http://spdx.org/licenses/Artistic-2.0).
 `BSD-2-clause` | Berkeley software distribution license, [2-clause
 version](http://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause).
@@ -467,6 +468,27 @@
 > also delete it here.

 
+### Public domain
+
+The `License` short name `public-domain` does not refer to a set of
+license terms. There are some works which are not subject to copyright
+in any jurisdiction and therefore no license is required for any
+purpose covered by copyright law. This short name is an explicit
+declaration that the associated files are “in the public domain”.
+
+Widespread misunderstanding about copyright in general, and the public
+domain in particular, results in the common assertion that a work is
+in the public domain when this is partly or wholly untrue for that
+work. The
+[Wikipedia article on public
domain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain)
+is a useful reference for this subject.
+
+When the `License` field in a paragraph has the short name
+`public-domain`, the remaining lines of the field **must** explain
+exactly what exemption the corresponding files for that paragraph have
+from default copyright restrictions.
+
+
 ## Syntax

  License names are case-insensitive, and may not contain spaces.

-- 
 \       “If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; |
  `\     but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.” —Donald |
_o__)                                             Robert Perry Marquis |
Ben Finney