On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Paulo Matias<[email protected]> wrote: > I'd not agree here. Isn't public domain exactly the absence of a > license? When something is public domain you have no obligations at > all. Even citing the author's name isn't required. You can do what you > want with a public domain work. > > So I can't see why should we require to ship a different public domain > declaration for each public domain package. I think something like > 'none' or 'PD' without the obligation to install anything to > /usr/share/licenses would be the best way to go here.
This is very very not true. There is no such thing as "public domain". Any code I write, without otherwise noting it, is copyrighted to me in the US and copying of it is not allowed under standard copyright laws unless I explicitly say otherwise. That's the funny thing - copyright actually protects the original author _by default_. Even more to the point, there is no way to willfully give up implicit rules such as this across the globe. Check out the FAQ here: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
