A Sage Developer writes "During a recent conference, Sage Days 6, Dan Bernstein (who has recently come under attack for his licensing policy) was among the invited speakers. During a panel discussion on the future of open source mathematics software, Bernstein declared that all of his past and future code would be released to the public domain (video here). This includes qmail, primegen, and a number of other projects. Given the headache that incompatibility between GPLv3 and GPLv2 is causing developers, will we see more of this?" Link to Original Source
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It used to be that everything was public domain by default, unless it was specifically registered and labeled as copyrighted. If you find something that is not labeled, it is safe to use. If you find something labeled that is older than the maximum copyright term, it is safe to use. If you have any doubt, you can contact the copyright office.
Nowadays everything is copyrighted by default. There is no meaningful maximum term... since the work need not be labeled you may not know precisely who produced it or
I'm not gonna get into a fight about your opinions on copyright, but you're pretty much just wrong about the facts as they relate to the concept of public domain. You can willfully contribute anything for which you own copyright to the public domain. All that's required is some kind of overt act, what the courts would call an "objective manifestation of will". Usually, that's a statement to the effect that "I'm John Smith, I wrote the attached software called SmithTools and own the copyrights to it, and I'
How? (Score:1)
It used to be that everything was public domain by default, unless it was specifically registered and labeled as copyrighted. If you find something that is not labeled, it is safe to use. If you find something labeled that is older than the maximum copyright term, it is safe to use. If you have any doubt, you can contact the copyright office.
Nowadays everything is copyrighted by default. There is no meaningful maximum term... since the work need not be labeled you may not know precisely who produced it or
Re: (Score:2)
You distribute the work with an explicit dedication to the public domain (see, for instance, SQLite).
Re: (Score:2)
You can willfully contribute anything for which you own copyright to the public domain. All that's required is some kind of overt act, what the courts would call an "objective manifestation of will". Usually, that's a statement to the effect that "I'm John Smith, I wrote the attached software called SmithTools and own the copyrights to it, and I'