Lex Spoon wrote:
> I am not a lawyer.  The following is just some rambling ideas, posted
> for fun.
> 
> Andrew Greenberg <werdna at mucow.com> wrote:
> 
>>The copyright may be dedicated to the public domain, in which case,  
>>no person holds exclusive rights in or to the work.  There is no  
>>meaningful impediment to the use of public domain works, although it  
>>is useful to have evidence that the work has been so designated.
> 
> 
> This is what I meant.  I agree that it is not a good idea to release
> software without declaring any kind of copyright assignment or license. 
> However, I see no practical advantage to keeping copyright and releasing
> it under an open-source license.  Even the fabulously free MIT/X license
> has one string: you have to include the copyright notice if you make
> copies.  Is this one string desirable enough to make it worth using a
> license instead of going public domain?  If you use MIT/X (or GPL or any
> other license) you give up a big advantage of public domain: it's
> rock-solid established law that is codified internationally by the Berne
> convention.
[snip]

It seems to me that if you are going to be explicit and declarative of 
your intentions that either an explicit MIT/X license or an explicit 
release into the public domain have similar amounts of declaration. The 
difference is what is declared.

It is worthy that public domained code be explicitly declared such by 
the creator/author. Else how does one determine the lineage and capacity 
of the declarer to have the capacity to dedicate such to the public domain.

An example of public domain code is SQLite.
http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

My question about public domain code is what protections are offered to 
the creator/author? Disregarding the fact that one can sue anybody for 
any reason (or without reason), the MIT/BSD licenses and such explicitly 
state disclaimers of warranty for use of said code. Does one have equal 
claim under the law for public domain software. I am referring to the 
person releasing software under either public domain or MIT/BSD.

I do not know and have not even researched public domain law to 
understand the protections the creator/author has. But at least on the 
surface it seems that MIT/BSD would be more explicit and declarative of 
such.

When I refer to BSD, I refer to the latest version, one without 
licensing clause.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

Jimmie