On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 02:12:00PM -0500, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote: > 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.
But that doesn't relieve the author of damage claims either, no matter what the licence says. At least not in all jurisdictions. So on the basis that "public domain" can't be used because it is invalid in Germany, "MIT" can't be used because it is not entirely valid in the UK. Likewise the GPL and the Artistic licence. -- David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information Your call is important to me. To see if it's important to you I'm going to make you wait on hold for five minutes. All calls are recorded for blackmail and amusement purposes.
