[Ilugc] [OT] GPL and public domain software license.
- From: ramanraj.k@xxxxxxxxx (Ramanraj K)
- Date: Fri May 5 06:47:52 2006
Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
he is not confused - he is 100% right - so there is nothing to cure.
Simple, license of a copyrighted work and relinguishment of copyright are
two totally different things. It is the latter that leads to a work
getting put into the public domain
It is misleading to say authors cannot make grants to the public domain
under a simple license. If an author places his work in the public
domain under a license invoking his right under Section 30, nothing
would be left to relinquish under Section 21, which clearly saves the
prior license under Section 21(3). If the two are totally different
things, the saving would have been needless. The BSD like licenses save
just credit for the authors and GPL like licenses exclude proprietary
caging of free code, but otherwise, the author simply dedicates his work
to public use using the licensing mechanism. The author who publishes
with a license that says "this work is in the public domain" gives up
his copyright, and is a valid and lawful dedication.
Your confusion with how two totally different things could achive the
same object may easily be cured with this example. It is like one could
read a file using more or less. Though less is opposite of more, either
of them could be used to read files. As long as you can read and
understand the contents, it hardly matters you used more or less. A
license is a positive and simple grant, but a relinquishment is negative
and procedurally complex to implement in most jurisdictions. The
shortest path to dedicating a work to public domain is under a simple
license.
Someone here pointed to
http://www.wikipedia.org/public_domain The
emerging case law in the US appears to make it further simple by
treating works of authors who widely disseminate their programs at free
exchanges as belonging to public domain. The mere act of publishing the
work on the internet giving free access to the public could in itself be
easily treated as public domain dedication by the author, and I am glad
the law there is moving ahead in that direction.
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