[aur-general] license convention for public domain packages

[Stefan Husmann]

Aaron Griffin schrieb:
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Paulo Matias<matias at 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/
> 
Hello,

sorry for being so late in this discussion, but I had a short exchange of 
comments with the maintainer of the dataplot package. 
(see http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=27519) He suggested that a 
short explanation should be added to the packaging guidelines wiki concerning 
handling of programs declared as public domain.

What would be necessary for this? Do we have an agreement here?

BTW, in Germany, where a term like "public domain" does not exist, if you are  
the author of an article and give erveryone the permission to publish it, the
publisher nevertheless has the duty to add your name as the author to the 
article and has to ask you if he may do so. 

Regards Stefan