On 13 September 2017 at 17:46, Don Armstrong <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 13 Sep 2017, Nico Schlömer wrote: >> I sometimes see in d/copyright >> >> > Copyright: John Doe >> > License: public-domain >> >> e.g., [1]. However, these two statements contradict each other: public >> domain means exactly the _absence_ of copyright [2]. > > The Copyright: field in this case is usually indicating who holds any > residual copyright or author's rights in a jurisdiction which does not > completely support public domain (PD). It also indicates who the > individual was who dedicated the work to the PD. > >> Specifically, public domain is _not_ open source [3]. > > PD works are not necessarily open source in all jurisdictions, but they > can satisfy the DFSG in many. > >> Since Debian is usually quite careful when it comes to legal issues, >> I'm wondering what the official view point is here. > > The official viewpoint is that the software must meet the requirements > of the DFSG. Generally, a CC0-style PD dedication is viewed as > sufficient for all jurisdictions, and can satisfy the DFSG if source is > available. > > Finally, I'm unaware of a case where a jurisdiction has upheld a > copyright claim to a work which has been dedicated to the public domain > everywhere. This is a potential theoretical source of problems, but > there's enough actual problems with copyright and licensing for us to > concentrate our limited time on them instead. > >> Should there be a lintian error if the "license" is public domain and >> a copyright holder is specified? > > No. > >> Should "public-domain" perhaps be prohibited in general? > > Definitely not. >
Thanks Don, this information is valuable. if this question is common enough, perhaps it worth creating a simple wiki page to put all this information in there? Name suggestion: FAQ about Public Domain and Debian. We could even reuse Nico's concerns as entries for the FAQ.
