Arne Vajh?j wrote:
On 31-05-2010 12:42, Bent C Dalager wrote:
On 2010-05-31, David Lamb<dalamb@cs.queensu.ca> wrote:
On 31/05/2010 5:55 AM, Bent C Dalager wrote:
I do not see that there is any way for an author to put his work into
the public domain. He might write "this work is in the public domain"
on the front page of course but it is not clear that this holds any
legal weight at all and indeed my own country says you still keep
certain inalienable copyright privileges over it.
What country is that?
Norway. The English (non-authoritative) version of the law is here:
http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/KKD/Medier/Acts%20and%20regulations/Aandsverkloven_engelsk_versjon_nov2008.pdf
in particular para 3:
(...)
"The author may not waive his rights under the first and second
paragraphs, unless the use of the work in question is limited in
nature and extent."
"(...) This right may not be waived by the author."
also para 38c:
(...)
"The right under the first paragraph can be neither waived not
transferred. (...)"
and para 39e:
(...)
"Any agreement that to the detriment of the author significantly
deviates from the provisions of the second, sixth and seventh
paragraph cannot be applied. The author may not waive his right
pursuant to the fifth paragraph."
(...)
There may be other examples, these are the ones I could easily find by
searching on "waive" in the document. Not all of the above may apply
to software, I didn't check. Some specifics of software are treated in
paras 39g,h,i.
FireFox and Thunderbird uses SQLite.
The authors of SQLite has released it as public domain.
If such a release is not valid in Norway, then all users
of FF and TB in Norway are breaking copyright.
I think a lot of IT people would be willing to testify about
"industry practice", "common sense", "the intention of the law"
etc. if that came to a trial.
You can make a reasonable argument that anyone who has put a statement
into their documentation disavowing copyright and explicitly releasing
it into the public domain (or so they believe) has in fact retained
copyright but effectively told users that they can do with the software
whatever they wish. This latter approach is one of the recommendations,
either that or using one of the more permissive licenses, for
accomplishing the same ends as placing something into the public domain
(which latter is difficult or impossible to do, and may be
counter-productive).
I'm no software lawyer but my reading on this subject tells me that
trying to disclaim copyright and put software into the public domain is
problematic. I recommend perusing
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html for
staters, but there is a lot of easily located discussion on this
subject...none of which purports to say that placing software into the
public domain is easy to do.