On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 8:04 AM, Jari Aalto
<jari.aalto@cante.n=
et> wrote:
I'm preparing to package miwm for Debian:
=A0 =A0=
http://sourceforge.net/projects/miwm
Hi! i was=
n't aware that miwm was still actively maintained. i haven't person=
ally touched it in many years.
=A0
=A0 =A0EKeyValueParser.cc: =A0 Author: stephan@wanderinghorse.net
=A0 =A0EPathFinder.cc: ** Copyright (C) 2002 stephan beal (stephan@wanderinghorse.net).
... =A0 EStringTokenizer.h:// =A0 =A0Copyright (C) 2000-2003 stephan@wanderinghorse.net
As "Public Domain" is not really a license:
=A0 =A0"Why the Public Domain Isn't a License" by Open Sourc=
e attorney Lawrence Rosen.
=A0 =A0http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6225
I=
t is, however, a license according to the sqlite team and its many commerci=
al supporters.
http://sqlite.org/copyrigh=
t.htmlThus the opinion of one lawyer has little weight for me. =
That said, i
understand that Public Domain is not recognized in all jurisdictions (inclu=
ding Germany, where i live).
But neither is copyright, for that matter, which means that there will alwa=
ys be jurisdictions where any given license (including the GPL) is not reco=
gnized.
Since copyrighted works whos copyright expires then fall int=
o the Public Domain, public domain must be recognized in order for copyrigh=
t to be valid at all.
=A0
I'd like to ask for clarification.
1) some of the files marked "NONE" lack the author and license. W=
ould
you confirm that the above "# NONE E*" files are also written by =
you?
=A0 =A0You can read the source code at:
=A0 =A0http://miwm.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/miwm/miwm/miwm/
The classes named E* in that source tree were either=
written by myself or ported from other source trees. The two classes which=
i know to be historically "interesting" vis-a-vis licensing are:=
NONE EStdStringTokenizer.cc
# NONE EStringTokenizer.cc
E*Str=
ingTokenizer is based off of code which was originally GPLd as part of KDE =
1.x or 2.x (i don't remember which). At some point (around 2000? 2001?)=
i recieved permission per email from the original license holders to relea=
se it as Public Domain. i unfortunately no longer have those mails - they w=
ere sent to an account owned by my then-employer.
=A0
2) As the miwm itself (other files) is released under GPL, would you
give your permission to relicense all of the "E*" files (includin=
g those
marked "Public Domain") under GPL as well as in:
=
Absolutely. One of the reasons for making them Public Domain is so=
that clients can re-license their copies however they want to without requ=
iring persmission to do so. As a cancer patient, there is never a guaranty =
that i'll be around to grant re-licensing request, and i release it as =
Public Domain partially to avoid such problems.
=A0
=A0"You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GN=
U
=A0General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
=A0either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.<=
br>
=A0See <http:=
//www.gnu.org/licenses/>."
IMO, that i=
s implicit in Public Domain, but if it needs to be explicit then feel free =
to add it.
Because of the on-going confusion about whether PD really i=
s a license or not, what i've started doing with newer code is using li=
cense text similar to: