On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 11:07 AM, AJ ONeal <[email protected]> wrote: > > Does anyone know if non-copyright is the same as public domain? > Is it otherwise compatible with open source licenses? > Is it otherwise compatible with commercial licenses? > > They are compatible to a certain extent. The copyright is what gives an author the ability to distribute and license it how he sees fit. If there is no copyright, then no one can enforce a license on it (including you). So, you can put the code in an open source or commercial application, but you wouldn't be able to enforce your license on that particular code. Essentially, Copy+Paste is OK. You just want to make it clear to whomever is going to retain the copyright of your software that the section your copied is not a part of the copyright or license.
I've done things like this in the past and the legal department simply asked me to note via comments in the code that a particular function was public domain and not copyrighted or licensed under the same terms as the rest of the file. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
