[aur-general] license convention for public domain packages

[Aaron Griffin]

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/