At 10:03 AM 6/7/01 -0400, Berin Loritsch wrote:
>Alex Fernández wrote:
>
>> I read 12 fallacies and flaws in 5 sentences:
>> 06- "in the public domain" was the term used 20 years ago for open
>> source. Not useful any more.
>
>Not entirely accurate. Public Domain is a copyright law term referring to a
>published work where the copyright has expired OR the author chose to waive
>their copyright. While it is true that there were several freely available
>source code distributions that were in the public domain, but they had no
>protection.
>
>A work in the public domain cannot have any license or protection under the
>law. This means anyone can use the work, and make dirivitive works on it
>without consequence or ramifications. It also means that you can strip the
>original author's name from the source code and put your own there--nothing
>the author can do.
IMHO there is a far worse characteristeric of PD works. Usually
opensource/free-software has a disclaimer clause in license (ie the don't
sue me if the program screws your computer clause). Because users of the
program accept the license (or else they couldn't use program/source), this
gives the developer protection. They can't be harmed if a bug in their
software causes damage to a system.
Code in PD are not licensed and thus users do not waive the right to sue
... so put something in PD and you open yourself to attack ;) That is where
I see the biggest problem with PD and why I recomend X11 style licensing
for anyone who considers uses it.
Cheers,
Pete
*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof." |
| - John Kenneth Galbraith |
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