Andreas Rottmann wrote:
Florian Weimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
* D. Richard Hipp:
Public domain just seemed the easiest way to go.
It is, until you want to incorporate a contribution from someone who
can't give up his copyrught in a binding way. How do you handle
contributions from Europe, especially Germany? Or hasn't that
happened yet?
This is a point that always stroke me about "public domain": There is
no such thing as "disclaiming copyright" in Europe (or at least
Germany and Austria).
This is a rather sticky point. It's unlikely that someone who
unofficially "disclaimed copyright" would willingly change his mind
afterwards, but that assumes ideal circumstances. In the Real World,
people sometimes die, get divorced, or get sued by people they owe money
to. It seems to me that if someone from a country that doesn't
recognize voluntary relinquishment of copyright (and, AFAIK, that's most
countries) contributes code to SQLite or something similar, his heirs,
ex-spouse, or creditors could end up with a proprietary interest in part
of the code. Not good.
