On Sep 11 2013 7:27 PM, Jeff Epler wrote: > On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 07:41:36PM -0500, Charles Steinkuehler wrote: >> If there are no objections, I will add a header indicating I release >> the >> various device tree files I wrote into the public domain. > > I would greatly prefer not calling new contributions to LinuxCNC > "public > domain". As we have seen, this leads to FUD, including some people > claiming that it's possible that none of LinuxCNC is protected by > copyright. If you want to apply a liberal license which is > GPL-compatible, I believe the BSD-without-advertising, MIT, and zlib > licenses are frequently suggested for this purpose. > > I singled out the files I mentioned because they looked to me "like > code". Traditionally, "configuration files" in our tree have not had > any copyright notice or license and I don't know why that is. > > It absolutely would not *hurt* for configuration files to have > license > statements, because when it comes to configuration files, we should > be > just as clear that people have the right to use, modify, and > redistribute them as we are when it comes to the source code. > > I personally prefer that each individual file have a copyright notice > and license grant where possible, because a file is often a > fundamental > unit that people copy around. This follows the GPLv3's suggestion > that > "[i]t is safest to attach [terms and conditions] to the start of each > source file"; the GPLv2's wording is just about identical.
"public domain" has a very specific legal definition (see http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Public-domain and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain for an introduction). In essence, if these are not very old works (which no code is old enough to go into the public domain by way of its age), then the author has forfeited any future claims. In the past, works made by the government and paid by public funds also went into the public domain. I do not believe that is now always the case. I believe it would be better though while we are cleaning up all the different licenses to keep the configuration under the licenses as well. It just makes it cleaner if everything is (L)GPL or whatever. EBo -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How ServiceNow helps IT people transform IT departments: 1. Consolidate legacy IT systems to a single system of record for IT 2. Standardize and globalize service processes across IT 3. Implement zero-touch automation to replace manual, redundant tasks http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=51271111&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
