On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Zach C. <[email protected]> wrote: > Re: putting things in the public domain: Daniel J. Bernstein and Lawrence > Rosen (of Creative Commons fame, I believe) seem to disagree with you on > that: http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html > > Plus, pretty much the only 'license' djb uses is public domain, so qmail, > djbdns, etc. are all public domain. Incidentally, SQLite (*not* written by > djb) is *also* public domain, and very widely used, too. Crypto++ is also public domain.
> As for being sued for public domain code... I would say it is hard to sue an > owner that does not exist (which is what public domain seems to do). Plus, > they would probably have to prove malice or something. I would not put anything past the lawyers. Jeff > On Oct 6, 2011 7:02 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:34:00 -0300, root said: >> >>> You don't have the faintest idea of how licencing works. You cannot slap >>> a GPL v3 license to any software you see, much less erase the author's >>> names. If you find a code in the internet without any license, you >>> pretty much can't touch it, and must re-implement it completely. >> >> In particular, if code was written in a country that's a signatory to the >> Berne >> conventions, it's usually somewhere between very difficult and impossible >> to >> actually place a software work in the public domain - at least under US >> law, >> even putting an explicit "This work is hereby placed in the public domain" >> quite likely does *NOT* suffice - the only two clear ways to public domain >> in >> the US are expiration of the "lifetime of the author plus 75 years" >> copyright, >> and "works for hire by a US federal government employee as part of his >> duties" >> (so, for instance, NASA photographs are public domain - but photos of NASA >> activities taken by non-NASA photographers probably aren't). >> >> Also, smart programmers *don't* release their code into the public domain >> - >> that means that anybody can do anything with it. And that includes >> stealing it, >> using it to make tons of money, and then suing you if they discover a bug. >> The >> original reason for the BSD and X11 licenses was because you can't stick a >> "hold harmless" clause on something you public-domain. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
