On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:22:05AM -0700, Rick Moen wrote: > Quoting Richard Fontana (rfont...@redhat.com): > > > I believe I am the counsel Tom is referring to, though the Fedora > > policy conclusion Tom refers to was prepared by Tom. Nevertheless I > > would see it as Fedora adopting more or less the liberal and pragmatic > > view I have had on this subject for a long time. > > Seems reasonable to me. > > Correct me if I'm wrong (you're the professional), but I would imagine > the relevant question for Red Hat, Inc. was not whether the erstwhile > copyright owner actually succeeded in eradicating legal title to his/her > copyright property (what is properly meant by 'public domain'),
Yes. I agree with you that 'public domain' is a misnomer (but no more than, say, the use of 'proprietary' to mean 'not free-as-in-freedom software'). > but rather whether Red Hat, Inc. will be reasonably protected > against infringement claims by either the owner's success or by > estoppel. Close enough, but I wouldn't want you to think Red Hat is just concerned about Red Hat. We presume that software we consider open source/free software allows certain permissions to everyone, not just Red Hat, or we'd classify it otherwise.[1] The "public domain"-labeled stuff we distribute in open source distribution contexts is code we consider open source software (equivalent, essentially, to what is now achievable through the quite detailed CC0). There are strange things I've seen in my time, like "public domain for noncommercial purposes". We would treat that as nonfree/non-open-source. - RF [1]Incidentally, I seem to remember encountering at least one case of a license that said the equivalent of "everyone *except* Red Hat is free to use this code". Also not free software/open source. :) _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
