> Moreover, in a discussion about open source software licenses I was > part of a few weeks ago, it was brought up that making a work public > domain was a very bad thing to do, because it opened up the author to > a whole bunch of legal liability that they had no recourse from, > which they wouldn't have if they retained their copyright but used a > permissive license. I think the gist was that the software couldn't > have a disclaimer of liability if it is public domain, and so anyone > could sue the author if something went wrong when using it. I don't > know how true this is or not, but would like to see it addressed in > the answer.
This sounds like FUD to me. How can you be held responsible for something which you have no control over and no knowledge of? IANAL but I think you need to prove intent or negligence and you'd have a really rough time proving either one. Well, you might be able to argue intent if you released virus source ;)
