On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Paulo Matias<matias@archlinux-br.org> wrote:
I'd not agree here. Isn't public domain exactly the absence of a license? When something is public domain you have no obligations at all. Even citing the author's name isn't required. You can do what you want with a public domain work.
So I can't see why should we require to ship a different public domain declaration for each public domain package. I think something like 'none' or 'PD' without the obligation to install anything to /usr/share/licenses would be the best way to go here.
This is very very not true. There is no such thing as "public domain". Any code I write, without otherwise noting it, is copyrighted to me in the US and copying of it is not allowed under standard copyright laws unless I explicitly say otherwise. That's the funny thing - copyright actually protects the original author _by default_. Even more to the point, there is no way to willfully give up implicit rules such as this across the globe. Check out the FAQ here: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/