[aur-general] AUR & Copyright

[Felix Kaiser]

On 02/08/2011 06:03 PM, Kaiting Chen wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 2:36 AM, Gordon JC Pearce<gordonjcp at gjcp.net>  wrote:
>
>> I'm going to jump in and say that you may consider any of my PKGBUILDs to
>> be under the WTFPL (google it, text may not be worksafe if they object to
>> Anglo-Saxon epithets.  I'm sure you get the idea).
>>
> Speaking of which I never understood how it was possible for a jurisdiction
> to not have the concept of a 'public domain' (thus necessitating the WTFPL).
> For example, where does a patented process go after the expiration of the
> patent?
>
> Oh and once again I vote we public domain (or as close as possible) all
> PKGBUILD's in the AUR.
>
> And one last point I want to bring up. Often PKGBUILD's are distributed with
> patches or other works not written by the author of the PKGBUILD. I'm not an
> expert but it seems to me that the license on the PKGBUILD would have to be
> compatible with the license on each such bundled work. --Kaiting.
>
For example, here in Germany, there is a public domain where things go 
if their copyright expires or they don't reach the threshold of 
originality. You just can't waive your rights and release something into 
it directly. How is this possible? Well: someone sat down and wrote a law.
(Note that patents and copyright don't have much to do with each other, 
I'm talking about copyright here. There are no software patents here.)

WRT licenses, I too think BSD would be a good choice for obvious reasons 
(permissive, short/simple, widely used, unversioned, compatible to most 
other licenses). That is, if we need a license at all. This licensing 
stuff always gets in the way, I wish there was a way we could avoid it.

I am not a lawyer.

Felix