On Tue, 24 Nov 2020 at 02:33, Craig Small <[email protected]> wrote: > > It's not used a lot because its a bit vague. All three of us could write > some license that we think is public domain but it is worded differently. The > problem for dh-make is, which one is the "right" one? > > For GPL-2 for example, there is a canonical version of the license. SPDX > lists several licenses that have public domain in their name.
SPDX Legal Team tries to handle PD with copyright law, and explains that they want to treat each public domain dedication as sepate implicit licenses https://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Decisions/Dealing_with_Public_Domain_within_SPDX_Files However, everything that is said also applies to GPL in countries where software licenses have no formal status. If we agree that public domain dedication is not a license, but a will of an author, then enforcing SPDX, which doesn't have a mechanism for copyright opt out, will filter out public domain software from package repositories. > dh-make already has a blank license and a custom license (where you feed it > the copyright file). I'm not convinced putting in a best-guess for public > domain license will be helpful.
