public domain
Hi, I'm writing a backup program for GNOME on Debian-ish distros (specifically Debian and Ubuntu) and I want the some of the documentation to be public domain, however I can't find any good resources on how to relinquish copyright. The closest thing I've found so far is <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>, but it has one part I don't think is relevant to copyright law and I definitely don't want in the docs: > Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to > the detriment of the Dedicator's heirs and successors. (the detriment part specifically as this seems to me as if it would make it possible for anybody except my heirs to use the docs) Also, I don't want to be held responsible for ensuring that it's a benefit to the public, as somebody might e.g. find the word 'backup' offensive. TIA, David Mandelberg P.S. debian-legal: please CC me on all replies as I'm not subscribed. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
"Public Domain"
I thought I saw a conversation somewhere that said saying a license "is in the public domain" isn't good enough. What is Debian's position on this WRT the DFSG? -- = * http://benham.net/index.html <>< * * * -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- ---* *Darren Benham * Version: 3.1 * * <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * GCS d+(-) s:+ a29 C++$ UL++> P+++$ L++>* * KC7YAQ * E? W+++$ N+(-) o? K- w+++$(--) O M-- V- PS-- * * Debian Developer * PE++ Y++ PGP++ t+ 5 X R+ !tv b DI+++ D++ * * <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * G++>G+++ e h+ r* y+* * * --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- ---* = pgpkMsNUItnCy.pgp Description: PGP signature
public domain?
Hi, How can I handle something like this? > > I just wanted to know under which license is it released, > > because I cannot find any doc on that. > Pang 1.20 has no licence. It's totally free to use, and the > source code are available to anyone who want to begin coding > a game for example. May I understand that as the code being in the public domain? Greetings and thanks, Miry (Please, CC me, as I'm not in the list) Miry __ LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo. Llamadas a fijos y móviles desde 1 céntimo por minuto. http://es.voice.yahoo.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Public Domain
Hi *, mdk, module devel. kit, is a tool for libgocr module creation. I made a ITP for both. The problem is in the README attached. It is the only reference in the tarball that recall a use license (libgocr is LGPL). AFAIK Public Domain is a 'class' of licenses, not a license. Should I mail upstream author asking him to public mdk with a more specific license? (I think so...) ftp.sourceforge.net/jocr Probably it is a trivial question, but solve my ignorace, please :) thanks, Cosimo. PS: Please Cc: me, I read debian-legal only via nntp gateway. -- Cosimo Alfarano - Kame Alfa on UseNet|IRC Undergraduate Student in Computer Science @ Bologna University [Italy] 0DBD 8FCC 4F6B 8D41 8F43 63A1 E43B 153C CB46 7E27 - 0xCB467E27/1024 This is the Module Development Kit for GOCR, created by Bruno Barberi Gnecco. This Module Development Kit is under Public Domain. It's the skeleton with all the tools needed to compile your code into a module, that can be opened later by GOCR. It includes all stuff needed by autoconf and automake tools, and libtool. To know how to use it, take a look at the doc-mdk/ subdirectory.
Re: public domain
David Mandelberg wrote: > Hi, > > I'm writing a backup program for GNOME on Debian-ish distros (specifically > Debian and Ubuntu) and I want the some of the documentation to be public > domain, > however I can't find any good resources on how to relinquish copyright. > > The closest thing I've found so far is > <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>, but it has one part I > don't > think is relevant to copyright law and I definitely don't want in the docs: > >>Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to >>the detriment of the Dedicator's heirs and successors. > > (the detriment part specifically as this seems to me as if it would make it > possible for anybody except my heirs to use the docs) > > Also, I don't want to be held responsible for ensuring that it's a benefit to > the public, as somebody might e.g. find the word 'backup' offensive. > > TIA, > David Mandelberg > > P.S. debian-legal: please CC me on all replies as I'm not subscribed. I suggest using the wording suggested by Branden Robinson in http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/05/msg00235.html ; the part starting with "I refuse to assert copyright". - Josh Triplett signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: public domain
On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 02:21:33PM -0500, David Mandelberg wrote: > I'm writing a backup program for GNOME on Debian-ish distros (specifically > Debian and Ubuntu) and I want the some of the documentation to be public > domain, > however I can't find any good resources on how to relinquish copyright. This is fraught and complex. Public domain is unfortunately clumsy; copyright law is acutely pro-corporate. It is much simpler if you just use the MIT license. It has the same practical effect with less hassle. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: public domain
On Sunday 27 March 2005 11:21 am, David Mandelberg wrote: > think is relevant to copyright law and I definitely don't want in the docs: > > Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at large > > and to the detriment of the Dedicator's heirs and successors. > > (the detriment part specifically as this seems to me as if it would make it > possible for anybody except my heirs to use the docs) Its not so much that copyright is pro-corporate as has been said (although it is), its that copyright won't assume anything about your behavior. Let's say that you take your copyright and shout out to the world, "you can all use this however you want." Is that truly public domain? Could be you have just granted a very open license and retain the copyright... and that the license is revocable. Copyright assumes you retain any right you don't explicitly grant... so you have to explicitly relinquish everything. The bit about the detriment to your heirs and successors is to ensure that their rights to the copyright, which kick in when you are dead, do not survive your granting of the public domain license. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure you can truly put anything into the public domain until the term of copyright has expired. To that extent I doubt Brendan's "I claim no copyright" language is going to work in the United States. I can tell you it is almost impossible to dedicate a patent to the public domain... but I'm uncertain as to the particularities of copyrights. All that being said, Creative Commons are smart people and write good stuff. I think you can trust them. To be certain you have no legal responsibility to ensure it benefits the public. There is no enforceable right or party to enforce the right. So no worries there :) -Sean -- Sean Kellogg 2nd Year - University of Washington School of Law GPSS Senator - Student Bar Association Editor-at-Large - National ACS Blog [http://www.acsblog.org] So, let go ...Jump in ...Oh well, what you waiting for? ...it's all right ...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
Re: public domain
On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 06:08:08PM -0800, Sean Kellogg wrote: > Its not so much that copyright is pro-corporate as has been said (although it > is), its that copyright won't assume anything about your behavior. <...> > Copyright assumes you retain any right you don't explicitly > grant... so you have to explicitly relinquish everything. That would be one of the primary ways in which it is acutely pro-corporate and pro-lawyer. > To be honest, I'm not entirely sure you can truly put anything into the > public > domain until the term of copyright has expired. This varies with jurisdiction. > All that being said, Creative Commons are smart people and write good stuff. > I think you can trust them. I don't. They have been acutely US-centric to date, and they write bad stuff. Also, some of them are lawyers. Any lawyer who is not your lawyer is acutely untrustworthy; they are acting in the best interests of somebody other than you. Trusting them is foolish, especially when you don't know who that person is. They are under no obligation to treat you fairly or tell you the truth, and they may be under obligation to lie to you outright. They have a notion of 'professional conduct', and it is not congruent with any conventional definition of 'honourable conduct' - in many respects, it is the opposite. > To be certain you have no legal responsibility > to ensure it benefits the public. There is no enforceable right or party to > enforce the right. This is not true in all jurisdictions. Notably it's not true in the UK. Pro-consumer laws have strange and interesting effects when applied to free software. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: public domain
On Monday 28 March 2005 12:03 pm, Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 06:08:08PM -0800, Sean Kellogg wrote: > > Its not so much that copyright is pro-corporate as has been said > > (although it is), its that copyright won't assume anything about your > > behavior. > > <...> > > > Copyright assumes you retain any right you don't explicitly > > grant... so you have to explicitly relinquish everything. > > That would be one of the primary ways in which it is acutely > pro-corporate and pro-lawyer. > > > To be honest, I'm not entirely sure you can truly put anything into the > > public domain until the term of copyright has expired. > > This varies with jurisdiction. > > > All that being said, Creative Commons are smart people and write good > > stuff. I think you can trust them. > > I don't. They have been acutely US-centric to date, and they write bad > stuff. > > Also, some of them are lawyers. Any lawyer who is not your lawyer is > acutely untrustworthy; they are acting in the best interests of > somebody other than you. Trusting them is foolish, especially when you > don't know who that person is. They are under no obligation to treat > you fairly or tell you the truth, and they may be under obligation to > lie to you outright. They have a notion of 'professional conduct', and > it is not congruent with any conventional definition of 'honourable > conduct' - in many respects, it is the opposite. > > > To be certain you have no legal responsibility > > to ensure it benefits the public. There is no enforceable right or party > > to enforce the right. > > This is not true in all jurisdictions. Notably it's not true in the > UK. Pro-consumer laws have strange and interesting effects when > applied to free software. The US-centric critiques have been addressed[1]. If there are further concerns those should be brought to light in the appropriate public forum so that CC can address them. Legal professional ethics codes are far more complex and comprehensive that I think you believe, demonstrated by the fact that you believe a lawyer can be under an obligation to lie (at best they can be obligated to omit, and even then you can get in trouble). And what do UK pro-consumer licenses have to do with a copyright license? Perhaps if we are talking about software as a product... but this is documentation and we are talking about copyrights, so our only concern is expression and whether that expression is allowed or not, not products liability issue. The law is both complex and subtle, such broad bush strokes both hurt your underlying argument and cloud the truth. -Sean [1] http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002449.shtml -- Sean Kellogg 2nd Year - University of Washington School of Law GPSS Senator - Student Bar Association Editor-at-Large - National ACS Blog [http://www.acsblog.org] So, let go ...Jump in ...Oh well, what you waiting for? ...it's all right ...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
Re: public domain
On Mon, Mar 28, 2005 at 12:24:39PM -0800, Sean Kellogg wrote: > The US-centric critiques have been addressed[1]. ...or not. That citation was inexplicably random. Did you simply pick the first thing which had somebody to do with CC and things which aren't in the US? I can't imagine how else you could have selected this, it appears to have no relevance. > Legal professional ethics codes are far more > complex and comprehensive that I think you believe, demonstrated by the fact > that you believe a lawyer can be under an obligation to lie (at best they can > be obligated to omit, and even then you can get in trouble). That's pure sophistry (although I can't say I'm overly surprised). Sophistry to excuse their behaviour is another big part of what lawyers do. > And what do UK > pro-consumer licenses have to do with a copyright license? That just demonstrates that you have no conception of the issues. There are more ways to do things than the one laid down in US law. > The law is both complex and subtle, such broad bush strokes both hurt your > underlying argument and cloud the truth. And that one's pure lawyer. "Everything will be better if we can make it more complicated". -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: public domain
On Tuesday 29 March 2005 02:11 pm, Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Mon, Mar 28, 2005 at 12:24:39PM -0800, Sean Kellogg wrote: > > The US-centric critiques have been addressed[1]. > > ...or not. That citation was inexplicably random. Did you simply pick > the first thing which had somebody to do with CC and things which > aren't in the US? I can't imagine how else you could have selected > this, it appears to have no relevance. Okay, well, now that the debate has entered into some strange parallel demension where facts no bare no relevance, I shall return to my lurker status on this list. Hope my comments were helpful to someone. -Sean -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain
Sean Kellogg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Okay, well, now that the debate has entered into some strange parallel > demension where facts no bare no relevance, I shall return to my lurker > status on this list. Hope my comments were helpful to someone. I think both yourself and Andrew Suffield are exaggerating your positions. There may be real concerns there and the Lessig blog http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002449.shtml disappointed me when I first read it because it misses several points and appears to have obvious errors. For example, moral rights are called moral rights in English law - not "author's rights". Anyway, I don't think it's relevant to Andrew's concerns and I don't understand why you cited it. Then again, I don't think it's easy to understand, as I don't feel that Andrew has explained his concerns clearly, even for someone who has a passing familiarity with English law. I'm also not sure whether English law applies to the person wanting to place material into the public domain. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Subscribed to this list. No need to Cc, thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain
>however I can't find any good resources on how to relinquish copyright. That's because under current US law there is no clear way to do so. *Please* complain to your congressman. :-/ I believe under European law it is usually impossible as well. Check it out and then complain to your parliament member. :-/ The various public domain dedications you will see vary in the degree to which they add complicated verbiage to try to get around this problem. None of them is perfect, because it's a serious legal problem, but Creative Commons's does pretty well. (Branden Robinson's is *way* more thorough.) It includes "in perpetuity", which is important, as the law's default for such things is not in perpetuity. :-( I have suggested coming up with a clear "as-if-public-domain" license which would work in as many countries as we could manage. (Something like "I release this work into the public domain. If that is legally impossible, then I grant a perpetual, irrevocable license to everyone who does, did, or will ever exist, to treat this work exactly as if it were in the public domain due to expiration of copyright, and as if it were in the public domain due to being ineligible for copyright.") Don't use that, by the way; I don't want to encourage license proliferation. I do feel that current public domain dedications are insufficient. Most people are OK with the MIT/X11 license though, so I haven't had much interest. >> Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to >> the detriment of the Dedicator's heirs and successors. >(the detriment part specifically as this seems to me as if it would make it >possible for anybody except my heirs to use the docs) No, that's not what it means. The trouble is that a court might rule, otherwise, that you "couldn't really have meant to" deprive your heirs of your copyrights by giving them to the public domain. This precludes that. It is also an attempt to make the dedication binding on your heirs, who might claim that public domain dedication is invalid and impossible; at least it shows that they would be acting against your desires if they claimed that. >Also, I don't want to be held responsible for ensuring that it's a benefit to >the public, as somebody might e.g. find the word 'backup' offensive. You don't have to ensure that the *work* is of benefit to the public. Relinquishing exclusive monopoly rights (such as copyright) is presumably of benefit to the public, no matter what they're rights in. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain
On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 05:33:54PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > >however I can't find any good resources on how to relinquish copyright. > > That's because under current US law there is no clear way to do so. *Please* > complain to your congressman. :-/ Huh? I've never heard of this. I've only heard of problems with the public domain in other jurisdictions (Germany?), not in the US. -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain
Glenn Maynard wrote: > Huh? I've never heard of this. I've only heard of problems with the > public domain in other jurisdictions (Germany?), not in the US. In pre-BCIA (1989) US law, copyright was surrendered by deliberately publishing without a copyright notice. This was pretty much the standard method, and I am not aware of any other method being sanctioned by the courts or the law. Since 1989 that method has simply not been available, since copyright is fully automatic. I am not aware of any court case since 1989 which established the ability to deliberately place a work in the public domain by any other method. (For such a case to actually arise would either require an author who reneged, or more likely an author who died and whose heirs reneged, so it's not actually surprising that one hasn't shown up in a mere 15 years.) Although I'm not the best at legal research -- if you are aware of one, please tell us! Such a case would give some very good hints as to how to write a public domain dedication so that it would hold up in court. The worry is that "public domain dedications" may only have the effect of highly permissive license grants in the US, and may therefore not actually provide the full benefits of public domain status in one or more ways; including possible unlilateral license revocation by the grantor or heirs (since such a license would probably not qualify legally as a contract). So write your congressman and ask that authors be given a clear method to put their works in the public domain, rendering them free from copyright forever. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain
On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > Glenn Maynard wrote: > > Huh? I've never heard of this. I've only heard of problems with the > > public domain in other jurisdictions (Germany?), not in the US. > > In pre-BCIA (1989) US law, copyright was surrendered by deliberately > publishing without a copyright notice. This was pretty much the > standard method, and I am not aware of any other method being > sanctioned by the courts or the law. The standard method now (AFAIK) is to apply 17c2§201d.1[1] to transfer the ownership of the work to the public: (1) The ownership of a copyright may be transferred in whole or in part by any means of conveyance or by operation of law, and may be bequeathed by will or pass as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession. That's effectively what is being done (or at least, what's being attempted) in the cases where you state "This work is placed into the public domain." Don Armstrong 1: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_0201000-.html -- "The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim." -- Edsgar Dijkstra http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: public domain
Don Armstrong wrote: > The standard method now (AFAIK) is to apply 17c2§201d.1[1] to transfer > the ownership of the work to the public: > > (1) The ownership of a copyright may be transferred in whole or > in part by any means of conveyance or by operation of law, and > may be bequeathed by will or pass as personal property by the > applicable laws of intestate succession. > > That's effectively what is being done (or at least, what's being > attempted) in the cases where you state "This work is placed into the > public domain." Unfortunately, it's not clear whether that works. Transfers of real or tangible personal property to "the public" usually seem to result in transferring the property to the government (exactly which government is not at issue at the moment). In this case that would be definitively undesirable. And there aren't, to my knowledge, any copyright cases settling this question. In real property, if you really want to dedicate something to the public, you generally have to give it to a charitable foundation committed to making it available to the public in the way you desire.
Re: "Public Domain"
On 30-Jan-99, 19:52 (GMT), Darren Benham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I thought I saw a conversation somewhere that said saying a license "is > in the public domain" isn't good enough. What is Debian's position on > this WRT the DFSG? I've always understood that placing a (formerly/potentially) copyrighted work "in the public domain" is a statement by the author that they are giving up all copyright rights (if that's the correct phrase), and that anyone may use it in any way they please. For example, most US gov't works are public domain, presumably because the US residents taxes paid for them (yes, I know that's not universally true, that's why I wrote "most"). As always, IANAL, and I know even less about copyright in other countries than I do in the US. But I think any of the several websites that describe (US) copyright law will define public domain. Steve
Re: "Public Domain"
Darren Benham writes: > I thought I saw a conversation somewhere that said saying a license "is > in the public domain" isn't good enough. I think that a court would interpret "I place this work in the public domain" as "I grant everyone everywhere unlimited irrevocable permission to make and distribute complete and/or partial copies of this work". This is, IMHO, not the same as public domain. The latter status can only be achieved through the passage of sufficient time. > What is Debian's position on this WRT the DFSG? I think it should be acceptable but deprecated. Licenses that say things like "This work is released into the public domain under the GPL" are another problem entirely. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI
Re: "Public Domain"
Steve Greenland writes: > I've always understood that placing a (formerly/potentially) copyrighted > work "in the public domain" is a statement by the author that they are > giving up all copyright rights (if that's the correct phrase), There are some copyright "rights" that you cannot give up (though they aren't really relevant to free software). There is no such thing as a potentially copyrighted work. The copyright comes into existence the instant you fix the work into tangible form. > ...and that anyone may use it in any way they please. That anyone may copy it any way they please. I agree that is the likely legal effect. > For example, most US gov't works are public domain,... No. The copyright law forbids the US government to use the copyright law to enforce its copyright, but does not place such works in the public domain. I see nothing that bars the US government from sueing to enforce its copyrights under the laws of other nations, for example. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI
Re: "Public Domain"
On Saturday 30 January 1999, at 21 h 20, the keyboard of Steve Greenland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've always understood that placing a (formerly/potentially) copyrighted > work "in the public domain" is a statement by the author that they are > giving up all copyright rights (if that's the correct phrase), In France and, I assume, in many other countries, it is almost impossible to put something in the public domain: you cannot completely give in your rights. You have to die first and even then it takes a long time after this. > anyone may use it in any way they please. For example, most US gov't > works are public domain, presumably because the US residents taxes paid > for them (yes, I know that's not universally true, that's why I wrote > "most"). I have at least one package (ncbi-tools6) whose sole licence is "This work is in the public domain"...
Re: public domain?
It's probably a 'no rights reserved', which is basically the same as public domain. On 8/7/06, Miriam Ruiz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi, How can I handle something like this? > > I just wanted to know under which license is it released, > > because I cannot find any doc on that. > Pang 1.20 has no licence. It's totally free to use, and the > source code are available to anyone who want to begin coding > a game for example. May I understand that as the code being in the public domain? Greetings and thanks, Miry (Please, CC me, as I'm not in the list) Miry __ LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo. Llamadas a fijos y móviles desde 1 céntimo por minuto. http://es.voice.yahoo.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Andrew Donnellan http://andrewdonnellan.com http://ajdlinux.blogspot.com Jabber - [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG - hkp://subkeys.pgp.net 0x5D4C0C58 --- Member of Linux Australia - http://linux.org.au Debian user - http://debian.org Get free rewards - http://ezyrewards.com/?id=23484 OpenNIC user - http://www.opennic.unrated.net
Re: public domain?
On Mon, 7 Aug 2006 09:00:04 +0200 (CEST) Miriam Ruiz wrote: > Hi, Hi! > > How can I handle something like this? With much care, I would say... :p > > > > I just wanted to know under which license is it released, > > > because I cannot find any doc on that. > > Pang 1.20 has no licence. It's totally free to use, and the > > source code are available to anyone who want to begin coding > > a game for example. > > May I understand that as the code being in the public domain? I would be very careful. Upstream seem to be a bit confused about copyright laws. Until copyright expires[1], a work of authorship is automatically copyrighted, at least in any country that adheres to the Berne Convention. When there is no license for a work, the law defaults to "All rights reserved", which means that all the exclusive rights are reserved for the copyright holder(s). In other words, nobody (except the copyright holders) has any permission to copy, distribute, and/or modify the work. [1] currently, apart from some exceptions, copyright expires 70 years after the death of the last co-author or 95 years after publication (when the copyright holder is not a physical person): not our case, right? ;-) Hence, "no license" actually implies that the work is *undistributable*! If upstream want the work to be in the public domain (that is to say, not copyrighted), they have to explicitly disclaim copyright interest in the work and dedicate it to the public domain. Debian usually accepts this kind of statement of will from upstream authors, but please note that some people have doubts about the legal possibility to dedicate a work to the public domain under the Berne Convention (that is to say, it's not even clear whether it's at all possible to release something to the public domain!). If you want to be safe, persuade upstream to release Pang under a permissive non-copyleft DFSG-free license (such as the Expat license <http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt>): the result is very close to public domain, but much more clear and certain. The usual disclaimers: IANAL, IANADD. > > Greetings and thanks, > Miry You are welcome! > > (Please, CC me, as I'm not in the list) Done. -- But it is also tradition that times *must* and always do change, my friend. -- from _Coming to America_ . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpFiSy8N9F4j.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: public domain?
On 8/9/06, Francesco Poli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: authors, but please note that some people have doubts about the legal possibility to dedicate a work to the public domain under the Berne Convention (that is to say, it's not even clear whether it's at all possible to release something to the public domain!). I think the current wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain better expresses the uncertainty around these kinds of issues: International treaties, like the Berne Convention, are not self- executing and do not supersede local law. There is no globally valid "International Copyright Law" that would take precedence over local laws. Instead, signatory countries of the Berne Convention have adapted their laws to comply with the minimum standards set forth by the treaty, often with stronger provisions than required. Whether or not something is copyright-free in some country depends on the laws of individual countries. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain?
Hi again, Upstream has agreed to add a license file to the tgz archive: """ This program is totally free and public domain. Do what you want to do with the source code. If you want, just give me some credits (Michel Louvet) if you port the game on another platform or use part of the source code. WARNING : The graphics and sound of the games are copyrighted material. There are in .BMP or .WAV format so you can change them if you want to distribute a totally free game. """ Of course, graphics and sounds will have to be replaced. I have artists working on that. Will that license be OK in these terms? Thanks! Miry (Please CC me, I'm not in the list) __ LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo. Llamadas a fijos y móviles desde 1 céntimo por minuto. http://es.voice.yahoo.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain?
Seems to be. In my previous reply I was actually assuming you had that info in writing, not just an email. But this seems to be OK. On 8/10/06, Miriam Ruiz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi again, Upstream has agreed to add a license file to the tgz archive: """ This program is totally free and public domain. Do what you want to do with the source code. If you want, just give me some credits (Michel Louvet) if you port the game on another platform or use part of the source code. WARNING : The graphics and sound of the games are copyrighted material. There are in .BMP or .WAV format so you can change them if you want to distribute a totally free game. """ Of course, graphics and sounds will have to be replaced. I have artists working on that. Will that license be OK in these terms? Thanks! Miry (Please CC me, I'm not in the list) __ LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo. Llamadas a fijos y móviles desde 1 céntimo por minuto. http://es.voice.yahoo.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Andrew Donnellan http://andrewdonnellan.com http://ajdlinux.blogspot.com Jabber - [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG - hkp://subkeys.pgp.net 0x5D4C0C58 --- Member of Linux Australia - http://linux.org.au Debian user - http://debian.org Get free rewards - http://ezyrewards.com/?id=23484 OpenNIC user - http://www.opennic.unrated.net
public domain, take ∞
Greetings! I'm fully aware that the opinions stated on this list have no bearing on anything, but I would still like to ask whether anyone here might have any ideas for improving the wording of the following license header: #!bin/bash # # Let this be known to all concerned: It is the specific intent of the # author of this script that any party who may have access to it always # treat it and its contents as though it were a work to which any and all # copyrights have expired. # I thought about "s/author/sole author/" but decided against it as not generic enough. I can see how deciding against it may make it rather unclear as to whose intent is being expressed, but I think that would be rather moot anyway in the event of any dispute. I now cut the ribbon opening this to the free-for-all of opinions... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Public Domain
> This is the Module Development Kit for GOCR, created by Bruno Barberi Gnecco. > This Module Development Kit is under Public Domain. > > It's the skeleton with all the tools needed to compile your code into a > module, > that can be opened later by GOCR. It includes all stuff needed by autoconf and > automake tools, and libtool. > > To know how to use it, take a look at the doc-mdk/ subdirectory. This is fine, you don't have to bug the author. He's put it in the public domain, meaning that it is no longer under copyright. It is kind of wierd that he capitalized it. But I don't think it is a problem, since the meaning is clear. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Public domain fonts?
I was looking at some fonts recently, and I was wondering if I could package them for Debian. The website (http://moorstation.org/typoasis/designers/moye/index.htm) says "A couple of Stephen Moye's Public Domain fonts", but isn't put up by him. One font (Trooklern) has only the font file in the zip, with "Developed by S.G. Moye 1991. Public Domain." in the copyright string (stored in the font). Goudy Hundred has a text file with no license statement, and a similar string in the copyright string. The rest fall into one or the other category - except one that has 7. I am releasing these typefaces as freeware. That's right: You don't have to pay me. I am hoping, not in vain, I trust, that you have a conscience and will not use or appropriate these typefaces to your use without giving some credit where it is due. In all events, the notice contained in the fonts must remain intact. and no license in the copyright string (this one seems to be much later than the rest - labeled 1997) and one that's broken and license-less. I realize I can't package the last two; what about the rest of them. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org "I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg
Public Domain again
http://opensource.org/faq#public-domain http://opensource.org/faq#cc0 Public domain is not a license, its meaning depends on the country you're in. What if that country applies laws that violate DFSG ? Please enlighten me. Jérémy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/510a78e2.4070...@melix.org
sct public domain
I am currently packaging the setcolortemperature program (sct) and I
have two licensing questions.
Firstly, the license of sct consists of one line:
/* public domain, do as you wish
Is this enough to consider this code to be in the public domain? I
maintain this code as upstream but did not write it so it's not like I
could get it changed easily if at all.
Secondly, sct.c contains these lines:
/* cribbed from redshift, but truncated with 500K steps */
static const struct { float r; float g; float b; } whitepoints[] = {
{ 1., 0.18172716, 0., }, /* 1000K */
redshift is a program that does the exact same thing but with more code.
This part is clearly copied and so does sct need to be GPL because it
borrows code from redshift? This is data and so it could be not
copyrightable but I don't know.
Thanks,
--
Jacob Adams
GPG Key: AF6B 1C26 E2D0 A988 432B 94F4 24C0 2B85 B59F E5A9
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
New 'Public Domain' Licence
I have seen quite a few people who want to licence their software as though it is in the public domain. they are often told to go with a bsd or x11 licence. They usually say they don't even whant the restrition of forcing people to include the notice. The reasoning for the use of the common licences is that they are well understood. Therefore in an attempt to satify all parties I propose the following licence for use in those types of situations. The licence I propose consists of the MIT licence below, excluding the part in the quare brackets. This licence therefore is well understood, and does not have the single restriction of the MIT licence. Copyright (c) Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so[, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software]. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Licence taken from http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Public Domain and Packaging
Hello, I run Debian and I recently wrote a small Python program. However, while I do maintain it, I have placed it in the public domain. I read the Debian policy manual. After asking for more information about licensing issues and public domain packages on the IRC channel, I was told alternately that I would need a license and I should ask on the Debian legal mailing list. I then also looked in the Debian New Maintainer's guide, which states "program must have a license, if possible free as according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines." Is it acceptable to maintain a public domain package or should I look at something such as Creative Commons Public Domain? http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ Thank you for your time, Rob Crowther
Re: public domain, take ∞
On Mon, 25 Sep 2006 17:21:24 -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: > On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 10:56:27AM -0700, Daniel Gimpelevich wrote: >> Greetings! I'm fully aware that the opinions stated on this list have no >> bearing on anything, but I would still like to ask whether anyone here >> might have any ideas for improving the wording of the following license >> header: >> >> #!bin/bash >> # >> # Let this be known to all concerned: It is the specific intent of the >> # author of this script that any party who may have access to it always >> # treat it and its contents as though it were a work to which any and all >> # copyrights have expired. >> # >> >> I thought about "s/author/sole author/" but decided against it as not >> generic enough. I can see how deciding against it may make it rather >> unclear as to whose intent is being expressed, but I think that would be >> rather moot anyway in the event of any dispute. I now cut the ribbon >> opening this to the free-for-all of opinions... >> > > What about: > > The author(s) of this script expressly place it into the public domain. > > Regards, > > -Roberto Looking through the list archives, I saw that it was recently stated here that the wording you just suggested may be legally meaningless, and in at least one English-speaking jurisdiction, amounts to gibberish. PS-Please fix your mutt and/or terminal config, as the subject line should read: public domain, take ∞ not: public domain, take ?$B!g PPS-I am not a subscriber to any of the Debian lists, and post only via Gmane. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain, take ∞
On Tue, 26 Sep 2006 08:01:51 +1000, Andrew Donnellan wrote: > On 9/26/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Le Monday 25 September 2006, à 16:21:24, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: >> > What about: >> > >> > The author(s) of this script expressly place it into the public domain. >> >> As yet said on this list, this notion of (and the words) public domain >> is not common to all countries and more where it exists it can be >> impossible to place something voluntarily in the public domain. >> >> A work *fall*[^1] in the public domain, it is not *placed*. >> >> [^1]: excuse my poor english, but the french expression is "tomber dans >> le domaine public" > > The standard replacement for this problem is something along the lines > of: "The author(s) of this script expressly place it in the public > domain. In jurisdictions where this is not legally possible, the > author(s) place no restrictions on this script's usage." I have seen license files that say things like that, but usually they don't easily address the ambiguity recently mentioned here regarding UK law. Furthermore, there should be a simpler method equally accessible to those who are located in jurisdictions where it's legally possible and those who are located in jurisdictions where it's not. I was hoping to be able to sidestep such complexities with the wording I proposed. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain, take ∞
On Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:43:22 -0700, Daniel Gimpelevich wrote: > PS-Please fix your mutt and/or terminal config, as the subject line should > read: > public domain, take ∞ > not: > public domain, take ?$B!g Never mind, as it appears that UTF-8 interoperability between the Debian mailing lists and Gmane is hopelessly broken. It should be the "infinity" char. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain, take ∞
Daniel Gimpelevich wrote: > Greetings! I'm fully aware that the opinions stated on this list have no > bearing on anything, but I would still like to ask whether anyone here > might have any ideas for improving the wording of the following license > header: > > #!bin/bash > # > # Let this be known to all concerned: It is the specific intent of the > # author of this script that any party who may have access to it always > # treat it and its contents as though it were a work to which any and all > # copyrights have expired. > # > > I thought about "s/author/sole author/" but decided against it as not > generic enough. I can see how deciding against it may make it rather > unclear as to whose intent is being expressed, but I think that would be > rather moot anyway in the event of any dispute. I now cut the ribbon > opening this to the free-for-all of opinions... "irrevocable intent" is probably better. :-/ Also, intent doesn't mean action. :-) "The author of this script hereby grants irrevocable permission to any party who may have access to it to treat it as though it were a work to which any and all copyrights have expired." I think that would be an improvement. -- Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Bush admitted to violating FISA and said he was proud of it. So why isn't he in prison yet?...
Licensing Question: Public Domain?
Hi Gang, I'm planning to package Norm Walsh's (aka Mr. DocBook) java catalog classes he wrote while working at Arbortext. The license simply says it's public domain (see below). Don't we need something that explicitly says we can redistribute this software? At least that's how I interpreted this section http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch2.html#s2.1.6 in the Policy Manual. I plan contact Arbortext to see what can be done, but I'll wait to hear the scoop from the experts. The full documentation (a README) is here: http://www.dulug.duke.edu/~mark/catalog-classes.html Which only contains the license snippet below. Thanks in advance, Mark Copyright This code is placed in the public domain. Warranty THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL ARBORTEXT OR ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. -- _ Mark Johnson Senior Lecturing Fellow 111 Physics Bldg., Box 90305 Department of Physics Duke University Durham, NC 27708-0305 (919) 660-2504 Fax: (919) 660-2525
Public Domain in Russia
I was looking at the license to mueller7accent-dict. The COPYRIGHT file reads: -- (C) 1996 S.Starostin (C) 1999-2000 E.S.Cymbalyuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Download: http://www.geocities.com/mueller_dic/ Copyright: This program is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or later, see /usr/share/common-licences/GPL on a Debian system or http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html on the web. -- I was digging around upstream, though, and found this: -- Copyright agreement is provided in first line of the dictionary file: (C) V.K.Mueller English-Russian Dictionary, 7 Edition; "State Publishing House of Foreign and National Dictionaries" Moscow 1961; Free Electronic Version by S.Starostin 1996 starling.rinet.ru/download/dict.exe; Electronic Version by E.S.Cymbalyuk 1999 under GNU GPL, ver. 1.2, see latest version on www.chat.ru/~mueller_dic or www.geocities.com/mueller_dic You may download original DOS-version of the Mueller dictionary (7 Edition) for DOS from www-page of Sergei Starostin. According to the extracurial compromise between company "ABBYY" and publishing house "Russky Yazyk", publishing house "Russky Yazyk" has copyrights on editions of Mueller dictionary published after 1961 only. Thus the content of Mueller dictionary published before 1961 is in public domain. S.Starostin, as the author of the first electronic version of Mueller dictionary, kindly allowed me to use his code one for any purpose. You can use my electronic version of Mueller dictionary under GNU GPL. The Russian Scientific-Technical Center "Informregistr" has registered the Electronic Version of Mueller Dictionary (7 Edition) on February 29, 2000. The number of State registration is 032030. -- This should be in the copyright file, right? More worrysome to me, though, is why is this in the public domain? Under Berne convention copyright law, Mueller or ABBYY or Russky Yazyk would still have copyright, unless it was deliberately given up. Does the registry number tell us anything about the copyright status? (I may be going a little paranoid here, but this upstream isn't careful in dealing with copyright issues, and the description sounds a little suspicious. What does extracurial mean, and what did he mean it to mean, anyway?) -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org "I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg
Re: Public domain fonts?
Any fonts that have "public domain" or something to that effect in their copyright field can be distributed by Debian with no problems. Note that "freeware" typically isn't good enough for Debian, since it doesn't give permission to distribute modified copies. When the font and any files you find with it grant different rights, you probably have all of those rights unless either says it must be taken by itself. If the copyright holder ever places the work in the public domain, no other licenses apply. On Tue, Sep 11, 2001 at 10:25:17AM -0500, David Starner wrote: > I was looking at some fonts recently, and I was wondering if I could > package them for Debian. > > The website (http://moorstation.org/typoasis/designers/moye/index.htm) > says "A couple of Stephen Moye's Public Domain fonts", but isn't put up > by him. > > One font (Trooklern) has only the font file in the zip, with "Developed > by S.G. Moye 1991. Public Domain." in the copyright string (stored in > the font). Goudy Hundred has a text file with no license statement, and > a similar string in the copyright string. The rest fall into one or the > other category - except one that has > > 7. I am releasing these typefaces as freeware. That's right: > You don't have to pay me. I am hoping, not in vain, I trust, that > you have a conscience and will not use or appropriate these typefaces > to your use without giving some credit where it is due. In all events, > the notice contained in the fonts must remain intact. > > and no license in the copyright string (this one seems to be much later > than the rest - labeled 1997) and one that's broken and license-less. > > I realize I can't package the last two; what about the rest of them. > > -- > David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org > "I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and > laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- Brian Ristuccia [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Public domain fonts?
On Tue, Sep 11, 2001 at 11:35:19AM -0400, Brian Ristuccia wrote: > Any fonts that have "public domain" or something to that effect in their > copyright field can be distributed by Debian with no problems. Note that > "freeware" typically isn't good enough for Debian, since it doesn't give > permission to distribute modified copies. When the font and any files you > find with it grant different rights, you probably have all of those rights > unless either says it must be taken by itself. If the copyright holder ever > places the work in the public domain, no other licenses apply. The problems were that they didn't come from the author (and the font world often distributes fonts without license or information); that public domain is often misused in the font world; and it's clear that some fonts were modified - for example, Paddington's text file says it's only distributed in Mac Type1, whereas the zip holds TTF's - and hence the copyright string would have been added in the translation. I've found what I believe to be a current email for the author, so I mailed him and asked him. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org "I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg
Re: Public domain fonts?
David Starner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 7. I am releasing these typefaces as freeware. That's right: > You don't have to pay me. I am hoping, not in vain, I trust, that > you have a conscience and will not use or appropriate these typefaces > to your use without giving some credit where it is due. In all events, > the notice contained in the fonts must remain intact. It sounds like the intention is an X11-style licence (BSD without advertising clause), but I know Debian usually insists on explicit permission to distribute modified versions for it to count as free. This is to prevent authors from coming back and "clarifying" (i.e. changing) the licence later. Still, this font could presumably be packaged in non-free. The author could hardly pretend that he hasn't given permission to redistribute the font unmodified. Silly, philosophical point: if the author is dead, then there is a greatly reduced risk of the author coming back and "clarifying" the licence, so presumably you can interpret the licence more broadly in that case. Edmund
Re: Public domain fonts?
On Tue, Sep 11, 2001 at 04:53:37PM +0100, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: > It sounds like the intention is an X11-style licence (BSD without > advertising clause), but I know Debian usually insists on explicit > permission to distribute modified versions for it to count as free. > This is to prevent authors from coming back and "clarifying" (i.e. > changing) the licence later. I'd find it more likely that the intent was not X11-style licensing. Few font creators have distributed fonts that can be modified. > Silly, philosophical point: if the author is dead, then there is a > greatly reduced risk of the author coming back and "clarifying" the > licence, so presumably you can interpret the licence more broadly in > that case. Of course, you've got the possibility of some descendent coming after you, who may have found the very concept of giving it away absurd, and is happy to take a very narrow interpretation of the license. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org "I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg
Re: Public domain fonts?
David Starner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Silly, philosophical point: if the author is dead, then there is a > > greatly reduced risk of the author coming back and "clarifying" the > > licence, so presumably you can interpret the licence more broadly in > > that case. > > Of course, you've got the possibility of some descendent coming after > you, who may have found the very concept of giving it away absurd, and > is happy to take a very narrow interpretation of the license. A spouse might have some kind of special authority, but a random descendent can't claim to have a more authoritative knowledge of the author's intentions than anyone else in the world, so there's no reason anyone should take any particular interest in the descendent's interpretation. That's what I meant. Edmund
Re: Public domain fonts?
On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 09:16:12AM +0100, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: > A spouse might have some kind of special authority, but a random > descendent can't claim to have a more authoritative knowledge of the > author's intentions than anyone else in the world, so there's no > reason anyone should take any particular interest in the descendent's > interpretation. That's what I meant. In the U.S., after the death of the copyright holder, copyright is controlled by whoever inherits it. Copyright eventually expires, but that won't make a difference for a long, long time. -- Raul
Re: public domain, take ∞
Please excuse the thread necromancy. Hopefully it's better to demonstrate that I've searched the archives than not :-) Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > [regarding an attempt to formulate a generally-applicable copyright > declaration achieving the effect of public domain] > > "The author of this script hereby grants irrevocable permission to > any party who may have access to it to treat it as though it were a > work to which any and all copyrights have expired." > > I think that would be an improvement. For works that are not a “script”, or that have copyright holders who are not an “author”, would this be a further improvement: The copyright holder of this work hereby grants irrevocable permission to any party who may have access to it to threat it as though it were a work to which any and all copyrights have expired. -- \“My house is made out of balsa wood, so when I want to scare | `\ the neighborhood kids I lift it over my head and tell them to | _o__) get out of my yard or I'll throw it at them.” —Steven Wright | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain, take ∞
On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > For works that are not a "script", or that have copyright holders > who are not an "author", would this be a further improvement: > >The copyright holder of this work hereby grants irrevocable >permission to any party who may have access to it to threat it as >though it were a work to which any and all copyrights have >expired. The Creative Common's CC0 project will probably be a better alternative once it is finalised: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0 -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: public domain, take ∞
Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > For works that are not a “script”, or that have copyright holders > who are not an “author”, would this be a further improvement: > > The copyright holder of this work hereby grants irrevocable > permission to any party who may have access to it to threat it as > though it were a work to which any and all copyrights have > expired. s/threat/treat/ -- Ben Pfaff http://benpfaff.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Public Domain for Germans
Can I as a German use the following Public Domain-declaration-text,
if I want the result to be dfsg-free?
I, the creator of this work,
hereby release it into the public domain.
This applies worldwide.
In case this is not legally possible,
I grant any entity the right to use this work for any purpose,
without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
--
#adBox3 {display:none;}
Wording for public domain
// To the extent possible under law, X // has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. Is this wording valid to be considered as Public Domain? Thanks -- José Carlos García Sogo js...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktim73=-ryjvkufhdu_zwhaupa6atw5el8d79r...@mail.gmail.com
public domain no modification
Hi all, I am working on the package for "Java Components for Mathematics" (#667923). Some files are distributed with a clear public domain type license: This source code file, and compiled classes derived from it, can be used and distributed without restriction, including for commercial use. (Attribution is not required but is appreciated.) However some other files are distributed with a much nastier license: ... 1) This source code file, in unmodified form, and compiled classes derived from it can be used and distributed without restriction, including for commercial use. (Attribution is not required but is appreciated.) . 2) Modified versions of this file can be made and distributed provided: the modified versions are put into a Java package different from the original package, edu.hws; modified versions are distributed under the same terms as the original; and the modifications are documented in comments. (Modification here does not include simply making subclasses that belong to a package other than edu.hws, which can be done without any restriction.) ... Clearly §2 is meant to distinguish derived work from original work. However in our case, this means this package will have to have its name change whenever we need to patch the source code (eg. fix a compilation error). Does it make sense to upload the 1.0 version under the name 'jcm', or should I prefer 'debian-jcm' package just to allow future work on it ? Thanks for your clarification, -M -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ca+7wusz1ktzjtdo4intemhrocb2dmz5ukxxicxbd0+yghgv...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Public Domain again
Jérémy. > Public domain is not a license, its meaning depends > on the country you're in. What if that country applies > laws that violate DFSG ? > > Please enlighten me. Why? Does this affect any software that you're packaging? Short answer: any software in that country is not free software, but the bug is with the country's legal system, not Debian. Hope that helps, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1u0z95-00073q...@bletchley.towers.org.uk
Re: Public Domain again
On 31/01/2013 19:45, MJ Ray wrote: > Jérémy. >> Public domain is not a license, its meaning depends >> on the country you're in. What if that country applies >> laws that violate DFSG ? >> >> Please enlighten me. > > Why? Does this affect any software that you're packaging? Not particularly. Some packages i can see sometimes have public domain files in them. > Short answer: any software in that country is not free software, but the > bug is with the country's legal system, not Debian. Will you still be uploading to main, if one day it becomes illegal in your own country ? Jérémy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/510abe44.9090...@melix.org
Re: Public Domain again
Jérémy Lal writes: > Will you still be uploading to main, if one day it becomes illegal > in your own country ? Are you taking a poll? Or is there particular interest in MJ Ray's answer? What is the actual issue you're addressing with starting this thread? -- \ “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do | `\ so too.” —Voltaire, _Essay On Tolerance_ | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/7w7gmt2e2x@benfinney.id.au
Re: Public Domain again
On 31/01/2013 23:16, Ben Finney wrote: > Jérémy Lal writes: > >> Will you still be uploading to main, if one day it becomes illegal >> in your own country ? > > Are you taking a poll? Or is there particular interest in MJ Ray's > answer? No. > What is the actual issue you're addressing with starting this thread? My issue is that i don't understand how public domain is DFSG, and the consequence is that i cannot handle it properly in debian packages. For example, reading [0]: When the License field in a paragraph has the short name public-domain, the remaining lines of the field must explain exactly what exemption the corresponding files for that paragraph have from default copyright restrictions. This debian/copyright paragraph doesn't follow that requirement : Files: * License: public-domain How can i tell it's a mistake if i can't explain what's wrong ? Jérémy. [0] http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#public-domain -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/510b043a.7060...@melix.org
Re: Public Domain again
On Fri, 01 Feb 2013, Jérémy Lal wrote: > My issue is that i don't understand how public domain is DFSG, If a work can actually be placed into the public domain, then that usually means that it has no copyright, and therefore automatically satisfies the DFSG so long as there is source. In countries where this isn't the case,[1] then it may not, but Debian has never claimed to be able to work around all countries broken legal systems. Beyond that, I'm afraid I'm unable to follow what you're asking for, exactly. Don Armstrong -- Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or daring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying. -- Terry Pratchet _The Color of Magic_ http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130201002521.gn30...@teltox.donarmstrong.com
Re: Public Domain again
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 04:25:21PM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: > On Fri, 01 Feb 2013, Jérémy Lal wrote: > > My issue is that i don't understand how public domain is DFSG, > > If a work can actually be placed into the public domain, then that > usually means that it has no copyright, and therefore automatically > satisfies the DFSG so long as there is source. > > In countries where this isn't the case,[1] then it may not, but Debian > has never claimed to be able to work around all countries broken legal > systems. > > Beyond that, I'm afraid I'm unable to follow what you're asking for, > exactly. > > > Don Armstrong In addition, I'd like to note that's what CC0 is for, really. It has some neat fall-back clauses that trigger in the event a jurisdiction doesn't allow for public domain works as such, and also releases database rights[1] which some other public domain dedications may not :) > > -- > Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or > daring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But > the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer > to achieve immortality by not dying. > -- Terry Pratchet _The Color of Magic_ > > http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org > Archive: > http://lists.debian.org/20130201002521.gn30...@teltox.donarmstrong.com > Cheers, Paul [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right -- .''`. Paul Tagliamonte : :' : Proud Debian Developer `. `'` 4096R / 8F04 9AD8 2C92 066C 7352 D28A 7B58 5B30 807C 2A87 `- http://people.debian.org/~paultag signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Public Domain again
On 01/02/2013 01:25, Don Armstrong wrote: > On Fri, 01 Feb 2013, Jérémy Lal wrote: >> My issue is that i don't understand how public domain is DFSG, > > If a work can actually be placed into the public domain Does this mean there are cases where the work cannot actually be placed into the public domain ? To be practical, are these files all right to be listed as 'public-domain' in debian/copyright : * without copyright notice * with a short notice 'There is no licence for this, I don't care what you do with it' * without copyright notice, and an explicit 'this code is under public domain' * the same as above, but with a copyright next to it, (i made that last example, to be sure i get it) > then that usually means that it has no copyright, and therefore automatically > satisfies the DFSG so long as there is source. > > In countries where this isn't the case,[1] then it may not, but Debian > has never claimed to be able to work around all countries broken legal > systems. > Beyond that, I'm afraid I'm unable to follow what you're asking for, > exactly. I would have been clearer by asking an answer about the examples above... Sorry for the noise. Jérémy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/510b149a.2080...@melix.org
Re: Public Domain again
On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 02:04:26AM +0100, Jérémy Lal wrote: > On 01/02/2013 01:25, Don Armstrong wrote: > > On Fri, 01 Feb 2013, Jérémy Lal wrote: > >> My issue is that i don't understand how public domain is DFSG, > > If a work can actually be placed into the public domain > Does this mean there are cases where the work cannot actually > be placed into the public domain ? In *most* jurisdictions, it appears to not be possible for a copyright holder to release their work into the public domain. That's why CC0 exists as a workaround, to make a pseudo-public domain dedication of a work. Works that are genuinely in the public domain (because they are old enough, or because they were produced under circumstances which do not result in copyright attaching to the work in the first place) are definitely DFSG-free. They also have *no* license, because there is no one you need to ask permission from! > To be practical, are these files all right to be listed > as 'public-domain' in debian/copyright : > * without copyright notice Yes; > * with a short notice > 'There is no licence for this, I don't care what you do with it' no (this is not a statement that it's in the public domain, and "there is no license" implies "no permission is actually granted"); > * without copyright notice, and an explicit > 'this code is under public domain' yes, provided this is true; > * the same as above, but with a copyright next to it, > (i made that last example, to be sure i get it) no, because these are contradictory statements. Public domain means *the absence of copyright*. If someone is claiming the work to both be in public domain and covered by copyright, they have failed to understand and we must assume the work is under copyright with no license grant. Hope that helps, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Public Domain again
On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 02:04:26AM +0100, Jérémy Lal wrote: > To be practical, are these files all right to be listed > as 'public-domain' in debian/copyright : > > * without copyright notice Not public domain. Copyrighted without license. If the author hasn't stated anything, then the work is copyrighted. > * with a short notice > 'There is no licence for this, I don't care what you do with it' Not public domain. Copyrighted without license. The part "There is no licence for this" explicitly states that there is no license, although the part "I don't care what you do with it" somewhat sounds like a license. > * without copyright notice, and an explicit > 'this code is under public domain' This looks like a work in the public domain. > * the same as above, but with a copyright next to it, > (i made that last example, to be sure i get it) Not public domain. Copyrighted with a statement that could be interpreted as a license. The author apparently meant to allow anyone to use the work as if it were in the public domain. Regards, Bart Martens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130201060414.gb28...@master.debian.org
Re: Public Domain again
* Steve Langasek [130201 02:24]: > > Does this mean there are cases where the work cannot actually > > be placed into the public domain ? > > In *most* jurisdictions, it appears to not be possible for a copyright > holder to release their work into the public domain. That's why CC0 exists > as a workaround, to make a pseudo-public domain dedication of a work. But in every jurisdictions you can waive almost all your rights giving everyone and non-exclusive license. And I guess in most juristictions it's important that the copyright holders precisly expresses their opinion and not that they use some magic words. (So I'd be suprised if any jurisdiction would translate a "I hereby place this work in the public domain" to anything but either making it public domain where possible or to a full permissive license). > Works that are genuinely in the public domain (because they are old enough, Note that old enough means the last author has to be death for a very long time. While some countries only protect a work of foreign authors if that were protected in their home countries, other protect for the full time. Which means it is at least 70 years after the author's death (or perhaps even 100). > or because they were produced under circumstances which do not result in > copyright attaching to the work in the first place) I think there is no such circumstance that would not make it not allowed for a significant percentage of even Debian Developers to handle that work freely. (For example US government works are only public domain within the US or countries that use the author's home country's rule instead of their own rules). > > * the same as above, but with a copyright next to it, > > (i made that last example, to be sure i get it) > > no, because these are contradictory statements. Public domain means *the > absence of copyright*. If someone is claiming the work to both be in public > domain and covered by copyright, they have failed to understand and we must > assume the work is under copyright with no license grant. It makes it very likely they have not understood it and thus leaving us with no proper license. (Though there are situations where it might not be that contradictionary, as it could also be the work's former copyright). Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130201221301.ga3...@client.brlink.eu
Re: Public Domain again
"Bernhard R. Link" > (So I'd be suprised if any jurisdiction would translate a > "I hereby place this work in the public domain" to anything but > either making it public domain where possible or to a full permissive > license). Sadly, "in the public domain" has two meanings: 1. the copyright-lacking sense used already in this thread; 2. publicly available. I've not seen case law, but I fear that it would be reasonably possible for someone to convince a court that a holder meant to make a work available but not permit everything. Anyone seen it tried? Thanks, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1u1qzh-0001uf...@bletchley.towers.org.uk
Re: Public Domain again
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013, at 07:56 PM, Paul Tagliamonte wrote: > In addition, I'd like to note that's what CC0 is for, really. It has > some neat fall-back clauses that trigger in the event a jurisdiction > doesn't allow for public domain works as such, and also releases > database rights[1] which some other public domain dedications may not :) The CC0 also expressly excludes a patent license to use the work held by the author. This makes CC0 excellent vehicle for groups wishing to share example code for a patented technique so that they may request royalty after it becomes popular. The FSF has determined that CC0 is a free software license, however, the OSI has decided to pass (http://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero) If you wish to become dependent upon software which is dedicated to the public domain under the CC0, you might want to see if the original author would strike clause 4a as part of their dedication. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1360067734.8199.140661187049717.0399b...@webmail.messagingengine.com
Re: Public Domain again
Jérémy Lal writes: > Public domain is not a license, its meaning depends > on the country you're in. What if that country applies > laws that violate DFSG ? I think you have to distinguish between two cases. 1.) Someone releases some code that is accompanied with a statement along the lines of "I hereby dedicate my work to the public domain". While there is some ambiguity in the term "public domain", it is clear that by any legal definition, such a statement concludes a waiver of all exclusive rights to this work. These works are fine to distribute in Debian, and maintainers and mirror operators should be safe if they operate in jurisdictions meeting basic international standards. 2.) The more delicate case is when the work is deemed to be exempt of copyright by US law, as is the case with works created by the US government. These works are only in the public domain within the US, as they are still protected by international copyright law [1]. Historically, Debian has adopted a US-centric point of view and accepts unlicensed US government works into main, but if you are an international maintainer, you might want to take additional precautions if you are dealing with such works. Hendrik [1] http://www.quantenblog.net/free-software/us-copyright-international -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87r4ktiy22@mid.gienah.enyo.de
Re: sct public domain
Jacob Adams writes ("sct public domain"):
> Firstly, the license of sct consists of one line:
> /* public domain, do as you wish
Seems like a clear enough intent to dedicate to the public domain,
along with a permission to deal freely. So yes.
> Secondly, sct.c contains these lines:
>
> /* cribbed from redshift, but truncated with 500K steps */
> static const struct { float r; float g; float b; } whitepoints[] = {
> { 1., 0.18172716, 0., }, /* 1000K */
>
> redshift is a program that does the exact same thing but with more code.
> This part is clearly copied and so does sct need to be GPL because it
> borrows code from redshift? This is data and so it could be not
> copyrightable but I don't know.
Is the formatting from redshift too ? If not then I think the r and b
values are probably fixed and the only thing remaining is the g value.
Not sure if that's enough to make it copyright. It might depend on
what exactly those values are. I don't know enough about colour
spaces and whatnot to say for usre.
You could always ask the relevant redshift copyrightholder and see
what they think.
Ian.
Re: sct public domain
On 06/24/2016 04:00 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jacob Adams writes ("sct public domain"):
>> Firstly, the license of sct consists of one line:
>> /* public domain, do as you wish
>
> Seems like a clear enough intent to dedicate to the public domain,
> along with a permission to deal freely. So yes.
Ok that makes sense. Wasn't sure if public domain was more complicated
but clearly not.
>
>> Secondly, sct.c contains these lines:
>>
>> /* cribbed from redshift, but truncated with 500K steps */
>> static const struct { float r; float g; float b; } whitepoints[] = {
>> { 1., 0.18172716, 0., }, /* 1000K */
>>
>> redshift is a program that does the exact same thing but with more code.
>> This part is clearly copied and so does sct need to be GPL because it
>> borrows code from redshift? This is data and so it could be not
>> copyrightable but I don't know.
>
> Is the formatting from redshift too ? If not then I think the r and b
> values are probably fixed and the only thing remaining is the g value.
> Not sure if that's enough to make it copyright. It might depend on
> what exactly those values are. I don't know enough about colour
> spaces and whatnot to say for usre.
>
> You could always ask the relevant redshift copyrightholder and see
> what they think.
>
I emailed Ingo Thies (who is credited with creating the table in
redshift) and he said that the table was created "by following
mathematical rules of color integration and conversion from the CIE 1931
color space to sRGB" and doubted it was copyrightable at all. He also
said he would have no problem releasing it to the public domain even if
it was copyrightable.
It doesn't seem like a conversion like that is copyrightable though. Do
I still credit him or is this definitely not copyrightable?
Thanks for your help,
--
Jacob Adams
GPG Key: AF6B 1C26 E2D0 A988 432B 94F4 24C0 2B85 B59F E5A9
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: sct public domain
Jacob Adams writes ("Re: sct public domain"):
> On 06/24/2016 04:00 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > Jacob Adams writes ("sct public domain"):
> >> Firstly, the license of sct consists of one line:
> >> /* public domain, do as you wish
> >
> > Seems like a clear enough intent to dedicate to the public domain,
> > along with a permission to deal freely. So yes.
>
> Ok that makes sense. Wasn't sure if public domain was more complicated
> but clearly not.
"Public domain" is very complicated. It means different things in
different places :-(. But happily here the authors hve not only said
public domain, but also given a clear separate permission. So this is
fine.
> >> Secondly, sct.c contains these lines:
...
> > You could always ask the relevant redshift copyrightholder and see
> > what they think.
>
> I emailed Ingo Thies (who is credited with creating the table in
> redshift) and he said that the table was created "by following
> mathematical rules of color integration and conversion from the CIE 1931
> color space to sRGB" and doubted it was copyrightable at all. He also
> said he would have no problem releasing it to the public domain even if
> it was copyrightable.
Great. You might want to c&p that email into debian/copyright
(assuming Ingo Thies is happy with that). That's helpful so we have a
record in case anyone should complain.
> It doesn't seem like a conversion like that is copyrightable though. Do
> I still credit him or is this definitely not copyrightable?
We should credit people who have contributed, even if copyright law
doesn't ncecessarily require it. So: I would state the facts, as you
do here.
Regards,
Ian.
Re: sct public domain
Ian Jackson writes:
> Jacob Adams writes ("Re: sct public domain"):
> > Ok that makes sense. Wasn't sure if public domain was more
> > complicated but clearly not.
>
> "Public domain" is very complicated. It means different things in
> different places :-(. But happily here the authors hve not only said
> public domain, but also given a clear separate permission. So this is
> fine.
The licensor even managed to avoid the often problematic “use” (which
has a long history of confusion about which actions are “use” and which
are not).
The license to “do as you wish” is, AFAIK, relatively free from
problematic or restrictive interpretation :-)
> > It doesn't seem like a conversion like that is copyrightable though.
> > Do I still credit him or is this definitely not copyrightable?
>
> We should credit people who have contributed, even if copyright law
> doesn't ncecessarily require it. So: I would state the facts, as you
> do here.
Agreed. Since we can do as we wish, I would encourage that we record
attribution information when it's available, because it is surprisingly
common to need that information years later.
--
\ “I'm having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I feel like |
`\ I've forgotten this before sometime.” —Steven Wright |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
Re: sct public domain
On 06/27/2016 08:22 PM, Ben Finney wrote: > Ian Jackson writes: >>> It doesn't seem like a conversion like that is copyrightable though. >>> Do I still credit him or is this definitely not copyrightable? >> >> We should credit people who have contributed, even if copyright law >> doesn't ncecessarily require it. So: I would state the facts, as you >> do here. > > Agreed. Since we can do as we wish, I would encourage that we record > attribution information when it's available, because it is surprisingly > common to need that information years later. > Ok. Got permission from Ingo to use his response in the copyright file and the relevant portion now looks like this: Files: sct.c Copyright: 2016 Ted Unangst whitepoints data copyright 2013 Ingo Thies License: public-domain-sct and public-domain-colorramp License: public-domain-sct public domain, do as you wish License: public-domain-colorramp I have calculated the table by following mathematical rules of color integration and conversion from the CIE 1931 color space to sRGB. . I doubt that a numerically computed color table is copyrightable at all (in contrast to the actual software implementation). However, if it is indeed copyrightable, I have no problem with releasing it into the public domain. Is there a better way to indicate copyright over a portion of a file? Is this clear enough? Thanks for your help, -- Jacob Adams GPG Key: AF6B 1C26 E2D0 A988 432B 94F4 24C0 2B85 B59F E5A9 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
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
Bug#294559: Public domain licensing
Dear knowledge source, As can be seen in #294559 I hope to become a debian developer. In the same bug report one can see that the package I'd like to start with is netbiff. According to it's web page the license is: " License All code contained in netbiff is released into the public domain. " Until I got asked me to double check with you I thought no problems existed including software with public domained source code in debian. It have been claimed that PD is a vague definition and the way GNU defines freedom, PD is only almost free because future versions might not be free. But that only applies do derived works, right? My understanding is that once released under the public domain, the public's right to that release can't be revoked? Have I gotten that entirely wrong? Will the upstream developer have to add a copyright claim to the PD license too to make it legal? I could try convince the Author to change to another license if there are serious problems with having PD software in debian. However I would prefer not to since I consider it to be the Author's right to choose what license to release his work under and respecting the wishes of others are important to me. -- /Martin signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
As long as whoever uses this license understands they are not, in fact, putting it in the public domain (copyright is retained)... and that this is not, in fact, a license (waver of implied warranty is a contractual provision)... and that the license is not irrevocable (after 35 years the author or heirs of the author can revoke any license, and the right cannot be waived)... then I guess this is a fine license. But I really don't understand the obsession with trying to put works in the Public Domain. Like it or not, copyright is a product of statute, not natural law, and the statutes of pretty much every industrial nation have been written to eliminate the public domain other than the expiration of the term. This is why we have things like the BSD, GPL, and the X11/MIT license. -Sean On Friday 03 June 2005 10:34 am, Anonymous wrote: > I have seen quite a few people who want to licence their software as though > it is in the public domain. they are often told to go with a bsd or x11 > licence. They usually say they don't even whant the restrition of forcing > people to include the notice. > The reasoning for the use of the common licences is that they are well > understood. Therefore in an attempt to satify all parties I propose the > following licence for use in those types of situations. The licence I > propose consists of the MIT licence below, excluding the part in the quare > brackets. This licence therefore is well understood, and does not have the > single restriction of the MIT licence. > > Copyright (c) > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a > copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), > to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation > the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, > and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the > Software is furnished to do so[, subject to the following conditions: > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software]. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE > AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER > LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING > FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER > DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. > > > > > Licence taken from http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php -- Sean Kellogg 2nd Year - University of Washington School of Law GPSS Senator - Student Bar Association Editor-at-Large - National ACS Blog [http://www.acsblog.org] c: 206.498.8207 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: http://probonogeek.blogspot.com So, let go ...Jump in ...Oh well, what you waiting for? ...it's all right ...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
First of, please use your real name when discussing things upon this list. Anonymity makes it rather difficult for others to follow your arguments, and interferes with the primary mission of debian-legal. On Fri, 03 Jun 2005, Anonymous wrote: > I have seen quite a few people who want to licence their software as > though it is in the public domain. they are often told to go with a > bsd or x11 licence. They usually say they don't even whant the > restrition of forcing people to include the notice. The MIT license is a fairly standard way to license things in a manner as close to the public domain in countries that do not have a concept of public domain. [It's not particularly "new".] > The licence I propose consists of the MIT licence below, excluding > the part in the quare brackets. > > [, subject to the following conditions: > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be > included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software]. The part above is almost a no-op, and a good idea regardless, because it informs recipients of the work what their rights are, and enables them to sanely to exercise the granted rights upon the work. Don Armstrong -- "People selling drug paraphernalia ... are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide." -- John Brown, DEA Chief http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 12:53:34PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: > First of, please use your real name when discussing things upon this > list. Anonymity makes it rather difficult for others to follow your > arguments, and interferes with the primary mission of debian-legal. I usually just ignore anonymous/pseudonymous messages on technical lists. > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be > > included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software]. > > The part above is almost a no-op, and a good idea regardless, because > it informs recipients of the work what their rights are, and enables > them to sanely to exercise the granted rights upon the work. It doesn't necessarily allow people to do much of anything. If I'm distributing a closed work that uses a few pages of MIT-licensed code, there's no practical value in showing the MIT license (or other permissive licenses) to users. Why, as a user or a programmer, should I care that the portions of a black box that come from Lua are under a permissive license? Saying "this program uses Lua" has value--giving credit--but telling me that I can freely distribute the part that is Lua has no value, since I can't actually do so (it's tucked away inside a binary; if I want Lua, I'll go download the source). In fact, it's potentially confusing; you have to be careful to be clear that only certain embedded portions are under the license, not the work as a whole. Also, due to license proliferation, different MIT-ish projects are actually under a collection of slightly varying permissive licenses, which prevents simply listing the one license and merging the copyright holder names--it's not hard to end up having to list half a dozen variants. For a project whose documentation is a simple "plug it in, turn it on, don't stick your fingers in the fan" pamplet, this isn't a trivial problem--the licenses can be bigger than the documentation. I use the MIT license myself, but I can say from experience that there in some scenarios, it has costs without any benefit. I do think this is a minor bug in the license: many people (such as myself) who use permissive licenses do so specifically to make it easy for anyone to use their code for any purpose, even proprietarily, without licensing getting in the way. I don't consider this significant enough to offset the cost of proliferating a new license, but I think it's worth acknowledging. If anyone really wants a license that doesn't have this problem, there's libpng's, which only requires the license statement in source distributions. (Unfortunately, the name of the software, "The PNG Reference Library", is used in the main body of the license, so changes beyond the copyright notice are required--unlike the MIT license, it's not a simple drop-in license. It also has an obnoxiouly wordy "Contributing Authors" section, instead of simply using a (c) notice.) -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
Don Armstrong wrote: > First of, please use your real name when discussing things upon this > list. Anonymity makes it rather difficult for others to follow your > arguments, and interferes with the primary mission of debian-legal. I'd say to at least use a reasonably unique pseudonym if you wish to remain anonymous. You might find debian's "rig" package useful for this. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Fri, 03 Jun 2005, Glenn Maynard wrote: > On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 12:53:34PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: > > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be > > > included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software]. > > > > The part above is almost a no-op, and a good idea regardless, because > > it informs recipients of the work what their rights are, and enables > > them to sanely to exercise the granted rights upon the work. > > telling me that I can freely distribute the part that is Lua has no > value, since I can't actually do so (it's tucked away inside a > binary; if I want Lua, I'll go download the source). The" value" it has is informing you that some part of that codebase is "Lua" and that you can go download the source to "Lua" to get at that part of the codebase... or, you can reverse engineer that portion of the code to get back at "Lua"... or exercise any other right (useful or not) that the MIT license gives you. [Most of this issue here is just a straight forward problem with non-copyleft licenses...] > Also, due to license proliferation, different MIT-ish projects are > actually under a collection of slightly varying permissive licenses, Yeah, the rest of this is really a problem with license promulgation, which is something that modifying the MIT isn't going to help with at all. Don Armstrong -- The solution to a problem changes the problem. -- Peer's Law http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
Anonymous said on Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 01:34:42PM -0400,: > well understood. Therefore in an attempt to satify all parties I > propose the following licence for use in those types of situations. > The licence I propose consists of the MIT licence below, excluding > the part in the quare brackets. This licence therefore is well > understood, and does not have the single restriction of the MIT > licence. (snip) > Licence taken from http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php It is better you discuss this with opensource.org's licensediscuss list. They may suggest you another license which meets your needs without proliferation. -- Mahesh T. Pai <==> paivakil.port5.com --- Free as in Freedom -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 04:39:12PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: > On Fri, 03 Jun 2005, Glenn Maynard wrote: > > telling me that I can freely distribute the part that is Lua has no > > value, since I can't actually do so (it's tucked away inside a > > binary; if I want Lua, I'll go download the source). > > The" value" it has is informing you that some part of that codebase is > "Lua" and that you can go download the source to "Lua" to get at that > part of the codebase... or, you can reverse engineer that portion of > the code to get back at "Lua"... or exercise any other right (useful > or not) that the MIT license gives you. [Most of this issue here is > just a straight forward problem with non-copyleft licenses...] You mean that the "problem" is that permissive licenses don't serve the goals of a copyleft? They're not supposed to. The goal (or at least one very common goal) of permissive licenses is to encourage free use of code, and it's understandable that people with this philosophy don't want to force people to include a useless license block, either. Actually, nothing about the MIT license says anything about telling people that you use a library, or that you can get it anywhere. A copy of the Lua license is attached, just as an example: the word "Lua" appears nowhere in the license. Including the license doesn't even give any hint about Lua, unless you already know it exists! You can't reverse-engineer that portion of the code to get back at "Lua", because there's no way to tell which parts are Lua, which parts have had copyrightable modifications applied which are not under Lua's license, and which parts are entirely unrelated to Lua. I don't see any benefit in twisting people's arms to put big blobs of text informing people that it's theoretically legal to do something, when it's neither possible nor useful in practice. Telling people this is just wasting their time. (The warranty disclaimer is another issue, though.) -- Glenn Maynard Copyright (C) 2003,2004 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On 6/3/05, Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > You mean that the "problem" is that permissive licenses don't serve the > goals of a copyleft? They're not supposed to. The goal (or at least > one very common goal) of permissive licenses is to encourage free use > of code, and it's understandable that people with this philosophy don't > want to force people to include a useless license block, either. These two statements are at odds with each other. I think it's confusing and misleading to claim otherwise. Fundamentally, the goal of public domain is to allow arbtrary non-free use of the material. And the same basic goal holds for near public- domain licenses. This is why you see legal professionals in the field of copyright warning people that public domain probably isn't what they want. Free use is also allowed. But if that was the crucial goal, the GPL would be quiet adequate. -- Raul
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 07:08:23PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: > On 6/3/05, Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You mean that the "problem" is that permissive licenses don't serve the > > goals of a copyleft? They're not supposed to. The goal (or at least > > one very common goal) of permissive licenses is to encourage free use > > of code, and it's understandable that people with this philosophy don't > > want to force people to include a useless license block, either. > > These two statements are at odds with each other. I think it's confusing > and misleading to claim otherwise. Sorry, I don't know which two statements you're referring to. A major goal of copyleft is to guarantee that anyone that receives a binary both receives the source, the ability to use it (eg. no additional restrictions), and knowledge that they can do so. These aren't goals of permissive licenses, and that's not a bug. > Fundamentally, the goal of public domain is to allow arbtrary non-free > use of the material. And the same basic goal holds for near public- > domain licenses. This is why you see legal professionals in the field > of copyright warning people that public domain probably isn't what > they want. No disagreement here (except the implication that non-free use is the only goal--the goal is free use everywhere, and non-free use is just part of "everywhere"). Permissive licenses are close to public domain, and reasons for using the two are similar. > Free use is also allowed. But if that was the crucial goal, the GPL would > be quiet adequate. If you wish your code to be freely usable, in as many contexts and by as many people as possible, the GPL isn't in the running. The GPL very deliberately makes a trade: in exchange for less free use (eg. more restrictions), it tries to encourage "giving code back to the commons" and all that. GPL-licensed code is not usable, for example, in proprietary software; or even in mostly-free programs that simply have a few GPL- incompatible plugins for interoperability (eg. OpenSSL). That's not a bug, of course; it's explicitly intended to discourage proprietary development, and many people who use the GPL actively wish to do so, and don't consider that restriction a problem. That's fine. But people who don't wish to do so--who, in contrast, don't consider proprietary use of code a problem, and wish to minimize political, practical and legal barriers to reuse--often prefer permissive licenses. If that's your philosophy, then you may well not want to force people to include your 20-line license, either, since that can introduce practical problems. (I'm not sure why this seems to be a controversial statement; it seems self-evident to me.) -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
It is better you discuss this with opensource.org's licensediscuss list. They may suggest you another license which meets your needs without proliferation. Perhaps I was not clear that I do not intend to use this licence. I have noted that there have been at least ten requests for a licence that has for all intents and purposes no restrictions. a public domain licence. I was just offering such a licence. If you don't belive me that may people have requested such a licence look up these message ids: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 12:33:43PM -0400, Anonymous wrote:
> Perhaps I was not clear that I do not intend to use this licence. I have
> noted that there have been at least ten requests for a licence that has for
> all intents and purposes no restrictions. a public domain licence. I was
> just offering such a licence.
> If you don't belive me that may people have requested such a licence look
> up these message ids:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The latter message is from me. I am looking for such a license, as I am
trying to avoid ridiculous license propagation. My ideal license would
be in one of two forms:
- a common PD-ish license for which users can say "Oh, the PD license"
and know what it means (as we do now for the BSD, MIT, and GPL
licenses)
- a license so short that one can look at it and know what it means
(e.g., "X is dedicated to the public domain", "X may be
redistributed in any form without restriction").
The consensus I seem to read from debian-legal is that the second type
can't exist, because we have to list everything explicitly or our evil
heirs can revoke it.
-Peff
--
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Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(tm) Pro* Jeff King wrote: >The latter message is from me. I am looking for such a license, as I am >trying to avoid ridiculous license propagation. My ideal license would >be in one of two forms: > - a common PD-ish license for which users can say "Oh, the PD license" >and know what it means (as we do now for the BSD, MIT, and GPL >licenses) > - a license so short that one can look at it and know what it means >(e.g., "X is dedicated to the public domain", "X may be >redistributed in any form without restriction"). > >The consensus I seem to read from debian-legal is that the second type >can't exist, because we have to list everything explicitly or our evil >heirs can revoke it. > >-Peff > > > > I am probably wrong here, since I joined the list in the middle of the discussion, but can't you just put a notice at the top of the code like this? /* This code was written by and is hereby released into the public domain */ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 01:38:24PM -0400, astronut wrote: > *This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(tm) Pro* > Jeff King wrote: > > >The latter message is from me. I am looking for such a license, as I am > >trying to avoid ridiculous license propagation. My ideal license would > >be in one of two forms: > > - a common PD-ish license for which users can say "Oh, the PD license" > >and know what it means (as we do now for the BSD, MIT, and GPL > >licenses) > > - a license so short that one can look at it and know what it means > >(e.g., "X is dedicated to the public domain", "X may be > >redistributed in any form without restriction"). > > > >The consensus I seem to read from debian-legal is that the second type > >can't exist, because we have to list everything explicitly or our evil > >heirs can revoke it. > > > >-Peff > > > > > > > > > I am probably wrong here, since I joined the list in the middle of the > discussion, but can't you just put a notice at the top of the code like > this? > > /* This code was written by and is hereby released into the > public domain */ > What's "the public domain" in the context of UK / European law? [If it exists validly in the UK, for example, how is it to be interpreted if there is a conflict in definition with European Community law?] "Public Domain" appears to many to be US-centric: better, by far, to have a crack at _some_ kind of licence. It is useful to have explicit permission to use freely for commercial/governmental/not for profit and personal and private use for example. Permission to modify or distribute in other forms is also useful as is explicit permission to sell or distribute as part of other media or to use the information in derivative works. All of the above could reasonably be either inferred or denied depending on how you read or interpret everything between /* and */ > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
astronut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I am probably wrong here, since I joined the list in the middle of the > discussion, but can't you just put a notice at the top of the code like > this? > > /* This code was written by and is hereby released into the > public domain */ There are supposedly jurisdictions where the concept of public domain does not exist, and such a statement would have no meaning. In these jurisdictions, the usual copyright law rules would apply, prohibiting anything resembling free use of the software. -- Måns Rullgård [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
M?ns Rullg?rd wrote: > astronut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I am probably wrong here, since I joined the list in the middle of the > > discussion, but can't you just put a notice at the top of the code like > > this? > > > > /* This code was written by and is hereby released into the > > public domain */ > > There are supposedly jurisdictions where the concept of public domain > does not exist, and such a statement would have no meaning. The Netherlands is one. Well, we do have a public domain, but it only contains works that by law have no copyright and works whose copyright has expired. _Probably_ a Dutch judge would treat the above statement as a license that means "do whatever you want", since he's supposed to reconstruct the intention of the author from such a vague statement. And "do whatever you want" seems the intention. But would ever bring a lawsuit asserting copyright infringement? (Well, maybe if his moral rights were infringed but he can't give those up anyway) Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:57:47PM +, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > What's "the public domain" in the context of UK / European law? I don't know, as I am neither a lawyer nor a European. However, I assume there is some concept of a work which has passed out of copyright (due to time limitations). What is that called? What are the rights of individuals with respect to that work? > It is useful to have explicit permission to use freely for > commercial/governmental/not for profit and personal and private use > for example. Is use actually restricted by copyright? If you receive a copy of software lawfully, are you not free to copy, run, modify, or reverse-engineer it? See the 1991 European Software Directive, for example. -Peff -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 10:24:51PM +0200, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: > The Netherlands is one. Well, we do have a public domain, but it > only contains works that by law have no copyright and works whose > copyright has expired. So what's wrong with a license like: You may do anything with this work that you would with a work in the public domain. > _Probably_ a Dutch judge would treat the above statement as a > license that means "do whatever you want", since he's supposed to > reconstruct the intention of the author from such a vague statement. > And "do whatever you want" seems the intention. Yes, it is the intention. How about a license like: Do whatever you want. The only argument I have heard against this is that you (or your heirs) may later say "Oh, but I didn't really mean *anything*." Which seems silly to me, but perhaps that's why I'm a programmer and not a lawyer. Is there a legal way to say "No, really, ANYTHING" without resorting to listing all of the things (which can get quite long)? > But would ever bring a lawsuit asserting copyright infringement? It seems like it's not possible to prevent the author from bringing a suit at all (even with a public domain dedication). However, you can ideally make the suit trivially lose-able with a sufficient license. -Peff -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 10:24:51PM +0200, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: > But would ever bring a lawsuit asserting copyright infringement? His successors might (perhaps especially if they happen to be eg. native to such a jurisdiction themselves). -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On 20050606T165853-0400, Jeff King wrote: > So what's wrong with a license like: > You may do anything with this work that you would with a work in the > public domain. I have occasionally used the following notice: Written by Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho. You may treat this file as if it were in the public domain. -- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Debian developer http://kaijanaho.info/antti-juhani/blog/en/debian
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 04:46:24PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: > On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 10:24:51PM +0200, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: > > But would ever bring a lawsuit asserting copyright infringement? > > His successors might (perhaps especially if they happen to be eg. native > to such a jurisdiction themselves). Worse, "successors in interest" - which would be (eg) Sony, who just sued your arse for infringing upon their profit margins, and claimed all your worldly posessions in compensation. [Bitter? Me? Hell yes] -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 04:58:53PM -0400, Jeff King wrote: > > _Probably_ a Dutch judge would treat the above statement as a > > license that means "do whatever you want", since he's supposed to > > reconstruct the intention of the author from such a vague statement. > > And "do whatever you want" seems the intention. > > Yes, it is the intention. How about a license like: > Do whatever you want. > The only argument I have heard against this is that you (or your heirs) > may later say "Oh, but I didn't really mean *anything*." Which seems > silly to me, but perhaps that's why I'm a programmer and not a > lawyer. Lawyers are pretty silly people, yes. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Tuesday 07 June 2005 06:47 am, Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 04:58:53PM -0400, Jeff King wrote: > > > _Probably_ a Dutch judge would treat the above statement as a > > > license that means "do whatever you want", since he's supposed to > > > reconstruct the intention of the author from such a vague statement. > > > And "do whatever you want" seems the intention. > > > > Yes, it is the intention. How about a license like: > > Do whatever you want. > > The only argument I have heard against this is that you (or your heirs) > > may later say "Oh, but I didn't really mean *anything*." Which seems > > silly to me, but perhaps that's why I'm a programmer and not a > > lawyer. > > Lawyers are pretty silly people, yes. Perhaps lawyers are silly, but I think the law is getting a bad rap in this conversation. The issue is not with "evil heirs" but with termination rights and market forces. Consider for a moment a budding artist who writes a really great song. Since she's unknown she has to distribute it through a label, who has all of the market power in the deal. The result of the deal is she is poorly compensated. The song goes on to be a humongous hit and the record label makes a ton of money while our poor artist remains pennyless. To resolve this sad and not uncommon story, Congress granted the copyright holders an inalienable termination right which allows the author to revoke a license or assignment 35 years after the transfer (its a 5 year window after 35, so at 40 the chance to terminate expires). Which means that if the evil record label wants to continue to make money from the song it has to renegotiate the terms with the author or her heirs... presumably the popularity of the song puts the author in a much better position, market power wise, and will net the author a better deal than the first time 'round. Note that this right is inalienable... under no circumstances can the author give away or renounce the right. The reason is the same policy as above. If the author could sell the termination right, then the evil record label would require such a sale and still give the same lower level of compensation. By making in inalienable, the law ensures the author cannot be dooped into doing something foolish for a short-term benefit. Of course, this means that it is practically impossible to put something into the public domain prior to the expiration of the copyright. You really can't even wait 35 years after you release the software, because its 35 years from the grant... and since you can't grant the software to "the public" you would have to wait 35 years with each particular individual before their license becomes truly irrevocable. Certainly it is frustrating, but I think there are sound policy reasons behind the law. -Sean -- Sean Kellogg 2nd Year - University of Washington School of Law GPSS Senator - Student Bar Association Editor-at-Large - National ACS Blog [http://www.acsblog.org] c: 206.498.8207 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: http://probonogeek.blogspot.com So, let go ...Jump in ...Oh well, what you waiting for? ...it's all right ...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On 6/5/05, Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 07:08:23PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: > > Fundamentally, the goal of public domain is to allow arbtrary non-free > > use of the material. And the same basic goal holds for near public- > > domain licenses. This is why you see legal professionals in the field > > of copyright warning people that public domain probably isn't what > > they want. > > No disagreement here (except the implication that non-free use is the > only goal--the goal is free use everywhere, and non-free use is just > part of "everywhere"). Permissive licenses are close to public domain, > and reasons for using the two are similar. Change "everywhere" to "allowed for every person, regardless of the restrictions they then impose" and I'll agree with you. "Everywhere" is rather silly -- there are many galaxies which will never be graced with the presence of software package $FOO.. That said, both copyleft and public domain allow distribution to any person. The distinction is the kind of restrictions which are allowed in the context of that distribution. Public Domain allows the receiver to impose arbitrary restrictions. Copyleft restricts the receiver from imposing arbitrary restrictions. > If you wish your code to be freely usable, in as many contexts and by as > many people as possible, the GPL isn't in the running. The accuracy of this statement depends on the specific number you're trying to maximize. If by "as many contexts and by as many people as possible" you mean the product of context (measured as the number of restrictions which apply) times the number of people, then you are correct. > The GPL very deliberately makes a trade: in exchange for less free > use (eg. more restrictions), it tries to encourage "giving code back > to the commons" and all that. GPL-licensed code is not usable, for > example, in proprietary software; or even in mostly-free programs > that simply have a few GPL-incompatible plugins for interoperability > (eg. OpenSSL). This assumes that the restrictions imposed by OpenSSL would stand up in court for software which has those plugins. It also assumes that the authors of the GPLed content were unaware that those restrictions would be imposed on their software and that they object. > That's not a bug, of course; it's explicitly intended to discourage > proprietary development, and many people who use the GPL actively wish > to do so, and don't consider that restriction a problem. That's fine. > But people who don't wish to do so--who, in contrast, don't consider > proprietary use of code a problem, and wish to minimize political, > practical and legal barriers to reuse--often prefer permissive licenses. > If that's your philosophy, then you may well not want to force people > to include your 20-line license, either, since that can introduce > practical problems. (I'm not sure why this seems to be a controversial > statement; it seems self-evident to me.) The situation here is that even though the legal properties of public domain works seem self evident, in the general case they are not. For example, there are cases where an author who has released a work into the public domain may not be allowed to have a copy of that work. [A problem here could be proving that the work was put in the public domain and proving that the copy was obtained legally. It might seem self evident that this would be trivial to prove but in the general case it need not be -- especially if there are many years involved where the detailed history of that work gets lost.] As long as people understand that that's a potential outcome for the situation they're creating, I have no problem with people releasing their work into the public domain. But I object to people claiming that this kind situation is irrelevant. If you're going to release things that you might later care about into the public domain, you should probably make some effort to retain documentation on the details of every such release. (And you should probably also give people some way of proving that they received legal copies of a public domain work from you.) The same probably should hold for "near public domain" copyright licenses. -- Raul
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 02:36:27PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote: > To resolve this sad and not uncommon story, Congress granted the copyright > holders an inalienable termination right which allows the author to revoke a In other words, "for their own good", Congress removed people's right to license their own creations however they see fit; they restricted freedom to "preserve it". And as expected, it backfires as soon as an unexpected situation arises--such as people honestly wanting to give their creation to the world, for free, guaranteeing that the work will always remain under those terms. > Certainly it is frustrating, but I think there are sound policy reasons > behind > the law. I disagree strongly. It's restricting what I can do with my own works, denying me the basic right to give it away for free, without the threat of revocation down the line. -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Tuesday 07 June 2005 02:49 pm, Glenn Maynard wrote: > On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 02:36:27PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote: > > To resolve this sad and not uncommon story, Congress granted the > > copyright holders an inalienable termination right which allows the > > author to revoke a > > In other words, "for their own good", Congress removed people's right to > license their own creations however they see fit; they restricted freedom > to "preserve it". And as expected, it backfires as soon as an unexpected > situation arises--such as people honestly wanting to give their creation > to the world, for free, guaranteeing that the work will always remain > under those terms. Yes... because SO many works are released directly into the Public Domain... foolish Congress, protecting the rights of the many over the obscure wishes of the few. If you really want to ensure your works stay forever free, then make sure you teach your mate and offspring (the only folks who can exercise your termination right other than yourself) the value of your decisions. I like the Public Domain, don't get me wrong... but I dislike strong armed corporations more, so I think the balance struck by Congress works pretty well. > > Certainly it is frustrating, but I think there are sound policy reasons > > behind the law. > > I disagree strongly. It's restricting what I can do with my own works, > denying me the basic right to give it away for free, without the threat > of revocation down the line. You sound like a corporate lawyer... they would love nothing more than for the freedom of contract to be absolute. Imagine situations where you sign away 1st amendment speech rights to get a job, or maybe whistle-blower protections. Oh yes, it would truly be a brave new world if your way of thinking ruled the day. -Sean -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 06:33:38PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: > On 6/5/05, Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > No disagreement here (except the implication that non-free use is the > > only goal--the goal is free use everywhere, and non-free use is just > > part of "everywhere"). Permissive licenses are close to public domain, > > and reasons for using the two are similar. > > Change "everywhere" to "allowed for every person, regardless of > the restrictions they then impose" and I'll agree with you. > > "Everywhere" is rather silly -- there are many galaxies which will > never be graced with the presence of software package $FOO.. I'm missing the point of the word-nitpick. Permissive licenses try to minimize the obstacles they present to reusing code. > That said, both copyleft and public domain allow distribution to > any person. The distinction is the kind of restrictions which are > allowed in the context of that distribution. Public Domain allows > the receiver to impose arbitrary restrictions. Copyleft restricts > the receiver from imposing arbitrary restrictions. By imposing restrictions itself, which make the code impossible to use in many projects, ranging from simple GPL-incompatible projects to outright proprietary ones. (Hmm. That sounds a little inflammatory, but isn't intended to be; it's intended only as a statement of fact, acknowledging the trade the GPL makes.) > > The GPL very deliberately makes a trade: in exchange for less free > > use (eg. more restrictions), it tries to encourage "giving code back > > to the commons" and all that. GPL-licensed code is not usable, for > > example, in proprietary software; or even in mostly-free programs > > that simply have a few GPL-incompatible plugins for interoperability > > (eg. OpenSSL). > It also assumes that the authors of the GPLed content were > unaware that those restrictions would be imposed on their > software and that they object. Er, so you're saying GPL-licensed code is usable in GPL-incompatible programs, as long as you think the authors won't object? I'm pretty sure you don't think that, so I assume I'm misunderstanding something. > > That's not a bug, of course; it's explicitly intended to discourage > > proprietary development, and many people who use the GPL actively wish > > to do so, and don't consider that restriction a problem. That's fine. > > But people who don't wish to do so--who, in contrast, don't consider > > proprietary use of code a problem, and wish to minimize political, > > practical and legal barriers to reuse--often prefer permissive licenses. > > If that's your philosophy, then you may well not want to force people > > to include your 20-line license, either, since that can introduce > > practical problems. (I'm not sure why this seems to be a controversial > > statement; it seems self-evident to me.) > > The situation here is that even though the legal properties of public > domain works seem self evident, in the general case they are not. I'm a little confused. The subthread was about the costs, benefits and rationale of including a clause that says "this license must be preserved on all copies", which shows up in the *-BSD and X11 licenses. Not that I mind tangenting to other relevant topics, I'm just not sure how we got there. :) > For example, there are cases where an author who has released > a work into the public domain may not be allowed to have a copy > of that work. Do you mean that it's possible that an author might claim to release a work into the public domain, but not actually have the right to do so (eg. contractually)? That's true, but is true of all licenses ... -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 04:48:57PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote: > > In other words, "for their own good", Congress removed people's right to > > license their own creations however they see fit; they restricted freedom > > to "preserve it". And as expected, it backfires as soon as an unexpected > > situation arises--such as people honestly wanting to give their creation > > to the world, for free, guaranteeing that the work will always remain > > under those terms. > > Yes... because SO many works are released directly into the Public Domain... > Lots of works are placed under permissive licenses. > You sound like a corporate lawyer... they would love nothing more than for > the freedom of contract to be absolute. Imagine situations where you sign > away 1st amendment speech rights to get a job, or maybe whistle-blower > protections. Oh yes, it would truly be a brave new world if your way of > thinking ruled the day. Or your way of thinking: "give up freedom to protect freedom". Right. Brave new world. -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 02:36:27PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote: > > > Yes, it is the intention. How about a license like: > > > Do whatever you want. > > > The only argument I have heard against this is that you (or your heirs) > > > may later say "Oh, but I didn't really mean *anything*." Which seems > > > silly to me, but perhaps that's why I'm a programmer and not a > > > lawyer. > > Perhaps lawyers are silly, but I think the law is getting a bad rap in > this conversation. The issue is not with "evil heirs" but with > termination rights and market forces. Consider for a moment a budding I think there are actually two issues we're talking about. I was mentioning a line of reasoning I have seen here[1], which indicates that we must be explicit in crafting PD-ish licenses, because our heirs can bring suit, saying that the original author "couldn't have really meant to do something so clearly to his detriment." You are, as you say, talking about termination rights. But wouldn't those be just as much an issue here as they are with, say, the GPL? -Peff [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00485.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 04:48:57PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote: > Yes... because SO many works are released directly into the Public > Domain... I have been on this list for about 6 weeks, and I have seen no less than three active threads regarding public domain licenses. A minority, perhaps, but certainly there are people interested in this. > wishes of the few. If you really want to ensure your works stay > forever free, then make sure you teach your mate and offspring (the > only folks who can exercise your termination right other than > yourself) the value of your decisions. I'm not worried about my works staying free. I'm worried about people who want to use my works being sure that my works will stay free. > I like the Public Domain, don't get me wrong... but I dislike strong > armed corporations more, so I think the balance struck by Congress > works pretty well. Well, clearly I don't. :) The root cause of this problem is Congress, not an inherent balance. I don't *want* to license my work to a corporation in an irrevocable way. I want to put it in the public domain in an irrevocable way. But because there's no explicit way to do that (and I must fake my way through by using an extremely permissive license), both cases fall under the same category. With well-written legislation, they don't need to. > You sound like a corporate lawyer... they would love nothing more than for > the freedom of contract to be absolute. Imagine situations where you sign Now you're just being mean. I happen to agree completely with Glenn's statements. I'm not only not a corporate lawyer, but am spending considerable effort trying to figure out how in the world to just give away intellectual works which I have created on my own time. I'm sorry if that seems cold-hearted and corporate to you. -Peff -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
