Marco Peereboom wrote: > public domain is not properly defined in the framework of the law.
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/ Public domain is very clearly defined by law: it is the absence of copyright. If it's public domain, then you and everyone else can do *anything* to it or with it. However, what you were getting at in an earlier post was the difficulty in identifying what has or has not entered the public domain. The purpose of copyright is not what the MPAA/RIAA/MSFTers will have you believe. The purpose is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts..." http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html#section8 Given the problems nowadays with the drift and contradictory efforts by MS/MPAA/RIAA/Disney Corp and a generally litigious society (at least in the US) extra clarification is needed. Hence the licenses. The ISC license bootstraps of that promotion of science and useful arts by skipping that waiting period and launching the code directly into an approximation of the public domain. -Lars
