public domain? (was Re: standard representations)

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> At 12:29 AM 1/5/01 -0500, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> >Dan Sugalski <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > I'm beginning to loathe software licenses in a *big* way, and I'm a half
> > > step away from saying to hell with it all and going fully public domain.
> > > (Or at least pushing for it, as I don't control perl's licensing terms)

> >Public domain has it's own troubles too.  To be safe in doing a public
> >domain license, we'll need to get copyright disclaimers from everyone who
> >contributes code (and possibly their employers).  Otherwise, someone could
> >come along later and legally claim copyright on some part.

Dan Sugalski <[email protected]> wrote:
 
> No worse than what we need now. Submitting code to perl places it under the 
> license that perl uses, if it's to be included.

I am not completely sure this is correct, but only a copyright lawyer could
tell us for sure.

My worry is that when you submit a patch to Perl, you've already seen and
been made aware of its license it's a bit more clear that one agrees to
release their software under that license.  You still claim copyright, but
you are at least implicitly licensing it under perl's license.

Public domain is a disclaimer of copyright.  It seems to me that it's much
harder to infer that, by submitting a patch, someone meant to say: "I give
up all copyright on this work" than it is to infer: "I am submitting this
copyrighted work of mine to a project whose license I know, and therefore
it's under the same license."  But, this is a question for a copyright
lawyer.



OTOH, digital signatures are apparently now legally valid in the USA
(although the details still aren't clear to me).  We could just ask everyone
to PGP or GPG sign a message that says: "I disclaim copyright", which isn't
a hard task.


-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn  -  http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn

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