On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 12:41 PM, David Cantrell <da...@cantrell.org.uk>wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 12:45:30PM -0500, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote: > > > +Inf. "Public domain" doesn't mean what one might think it means. Most > > importantly, it doesn't mean much outside U. S. jurisdictions. > > [citation needed] > The core of the problem is this: "public domain" is a legal term that only is defined within the U.S. (and I admit, other Anglo-Saxon law, like UK and Australia, etc.). Say, a German author saying "This is public domain" is making no sense. I know for a fact that in Finnish law an author cannot give away his rights, and the same applies in other European countries. Even more importantly, it doesn't work the way most people think. It doesn't e.g. relieve the author of warranties or damage claims. It's much better to choose a minimal license that disclaims warranties, such as the MIT one. If you just want to allow people to use your stuff, attach a minimal well-known license and be done with it, instead of making up your licenses, or letting the people to figure out what the hell "public domain" means in their countries. > But to avoid ambiguity, how about using "copyright-free" instead of > "public domain". Let's not make up our own legal terms. If your need is to list the licenses a package contains, in a way there is no need to list the "public domain" bits because there are no strings, err, licenses attached. It is in the public domain. > -- > David Cantrell | Enforcer, South London Linguistic Massive > > THIS IS THE LANGUAGE POLICE > PUT DOWN YOUR THESAURUS > STEP AWAY FROM THE CLICHE > -- There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
