Re: Public Domain

[Michael Maher <mike@redhat.com>]

> When something is bequeathed to the Public Domain, it means that
> EVERYONE owns it.  It is public property.  You can take something in the
> public domain, say, the works of Beethoven, and change it, use it,

like I said.. it really depends on the license and the wording.  Look at
the Turbo Vision license from Borland for example.  Their idea of Public
Domain and yours are alot different.

> distribute it however you like, and you never have to answer to anyone,
> ever.  The estate of Beethoven can't come up and say, "Okay, you need to
> pay me for using my ancestor's works now."
> 
> Public Domain isn't a license, it's the ABSENCE of a license.  Licenses
> like GPL and BSD are MUCH more restrictive.  They are also not public
> domain.  The example you cite is not Public Domain, no matter what they
> like to call it.

My point is that _some_ companies call things 'public domain' and their
ideas of public domain are different from yours.  Just b/c it's not
shipped with a license doesn't mean that their isn't one.  I've built
packages that were 'public domain' only to find out that their idea of
public domain and what it really means was quite different.  

Just b/c a copyright is not included with the source/music/artwork doesn't
mean there isn't one.  That's why it's important to throw a GPL license in 
something that you want to be GPL.  

> You can copyright a work that contains public domain code, but it
> doesn't prevent someone else from legally doing something similar with
> the same code.  You own any changes you make to the code.  Etc, etc...

Right.

> It's not something to fear, but it doesn't assure that derived works
> will be open-source, like GPL and LGPL do.

Right again.  But, the problem occurs when fundemental things such as
music, libraries, artwork, etc are used and it's too late to change it or
a considerable amount of work to do so. 

If you want to see an actual example of what I'm talking about look at
RHIDE.  I don't have a url handy but you can look on our ftp site in
pub/contrib.  It's all GPL source, built on a so called 'public domain'
library called turbovision.  Too bad you can't actually distribute working
source code for this application b/c of the license. 

-mike