Re: Public domain and DSFGness
David Given writes: > Example: the command shell I'm using (the CCP in CP/M terminology) is an > enhanced command shell alternative called ZCPR. The first version of this, > ZCPR1, which contains no copyright notice, and which was released in 1982 > to the SIG/M public domain distribution group. I found the release > announcement ( > https://github.com/davidgiven/cpmish/blob/master/third_party/zcpr1/Announcement.pdf) > which contains a passing reference to it being released into the public > domain. Is this good enough? Quoting the relevant section from that document ... So far, based upon both user feedback and our own experiences, we feel that ZCPR is a significant contribution to the Public Domain, and everyone who has used it greatly prefers it over standard CP/M. ZCPR is being released for Public Distribution through the SIG/M User's Group of the Amateur Computer Group of NJ. In the spirit of Public Domain software, ZCPR is by no means a panacea, but is IS a very nice stepping stone, and you are encouraged to feel free to modify it to please yourselves... I am not the person who decides this sort of thing for Debian, but that looks good to me. Cheers, Walter Landry
Re: Public domain and DSFGness
Specifically? I'm trying to produce a CP/M clone distribution which is DSFG-enough to ship with emulators (and also to run on real hardware should people wish). The original Digital Research source has a nasty clause in it which, AFAICT accidentally, means it can't be redistributed, so I'm finding open source alternatives and bundling them together. What this is involving is trawling through the archives trying to find free or public domain pieces and piecing them together. Example: the command shell I'm using (the CCP in CP/M terminology) is an enhanced command shell alternative called ZCPR. The first version of this, ZCPR1, which contains no copyright notice, and which was released in 1982 to the SIG/M public domain distribution group. I found the release announcement ( https://github.com/davidgiven/cpmish/blob/master/third_party/zcpr1/Announcement.pdf) which contains a passing reference to it being released into the public domain. Is this good enough? I was lucky there in that I found the announcement; there's plenty of source which has nothing at all, not even a copyright notice. For example, everything I've seen printed in Dr. Dobbs' Journal... On Wed, 12 Jun 2019 at 23:56, Ben Finney wrote: > David Given writes: > > > I'm doing some historical data preservation work […] I'm hoping to be > > able to produce a Debian package containing this stuff eventually for > > use in emulators. > > Thank you for promoting the preservation and spread of free software. > > > Back then people were really slack about licensing. Typically > > So: from Debian's perspective, what's the degree of proof I need to > > provide in order to demonstrate DSFG-ness of works such as this? > > This is difficult to discuss in the abstract, because it so often > depends on peculiarities of the specific works and the documentation > surrounding them. > > We try to keep these discussions to specific works that are actually > proposed to enter Debian. > > Is there a specific work we can examine that you are working to package > for Debian? > > -- > \ “I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without | > `\ hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd | > _o__) never expect it.” —Jack Handey | > Ben Finney > > -- ┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ─── │ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my │ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out │ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
Re: Public domain and DSFGness
David Given writes: > I'm doing some historical data preservation work […] I'm hoping to be > able to produce a Debian package containing this stuff eventually for > use in emulators. Thank you for promoting the preservation and spread of free software. > Back then people were really slack about licensing. Typically > So: from Debian's perspective, what's the degree of proof I need to > provide in order to demonstrate DSFG-ness of works such as this? This is difficult to discuss in the abstract, because it so often depends on peculiarities of the specific works and the documentation surrounding them. We try to keep these discussions to specific works that are actually proposed to enter Debian. Is there a specific work we can examine that you are working to package for Debian? -- \ “I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without | `\ hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd | _o__) never expect it.” —Jack Handey | Ben Finney
Public domain and DSFGness
I'm doing some historical data preservation work, trying to track down licensing for some really old (late 1970s and early 1980s) CP/M software. I'm using 'good enough to get into Debian main' as my ideal win condition here because it's a pretty high bar and if it's good enough for Debian it's good enough for pretty much everybody. Plus, I'm hoping to be able to produce a Debian package containing this stuff eventually for use in emulators. Back then people were really slack about licensing. Typically you'll see software contributed to a 'public domain' library with no explicit license but which contains a bare copyright statement. I have to write this off as if there's a copyright statement, the default license of all-rights-reserved applies. However, frequently there'll be software which doesn't contain a copyright statement at all. I know that US copyright is weird; they didn't join the Berne Convention until 1988. This means that works published without a copyright notice automatically entered the public domain, all the way up to March 1st 1989 (provided they weren't subsequently registered for copyright). This sounds like good news, but it may not be good enough for Debian --- countries *other* than the US joined the Berne Convention on different dates, so it's possible that a work could be PD in the US but still copyrighted elsewhere. And even then I'd still need some kind of paper trail to demonstrate that the work actually *is* PD. So: from Debian's perspective, what's the degree of proof I need to provide in order to demonstrate DSFG-ness of works such as this? (I've found https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#Public_Domain, but it's... vague.) -- ┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ─── │ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my │ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out │ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
