Public domain software is not open-source?

[Lawrence Rosen]

Alexander, 

This copyrighted email is hereby licensed under AFL 3.0. Copying this email
in violation of those license terms is hereby prohibited.

    Let me not to the marriage of true minds
    Admit impediments. Love is not love
    Which alters when it alteration finds,
    Or bends with the remover to remove:
    O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
    That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
    It is the star to every wandering bark,
    Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
    Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
    Within his bending sickle's compass come:
    Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
    But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error and upon me proved,
    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Now, please, can we let this topic rest?

/Larry Rosen 
(along with this entirely gratuitous attribution to Shakespeare, who has no
way at all under copyright law to force me to acknowledge him)

P.S. There is a public domain, but this email isn't in it.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alexander Terekhov [mailto:alexander.terekhov at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 9:38 AM
> To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com
> Cc: License Discuss
> Subject: Re: Public domain software is not open-source?
> 
> On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 6:02 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Nigel Tzeng wrote:
> >
> > Public Domain software, when the source code is available, meets all of
> the
> > OSD requirements but it isn't under a OSI approved Open Source license
> since
> > there is no license.   However, public domain software can be re-used
> under
> > an OSD compliant license, so in practice the issue is moot.
> >
> > That's a nice, clean summary. /Larry
> 
> I suggest that you write an article explaining how public domain
> software can be "re-used" under a copyright license stating for
> example that "This Open Software License (the "License") applies to
> any original work of authorship (the "Original Work") whose owner (the
> "Licensor") has placed the following licensing notice adjacent to the
> copyright notice for the Original Work: ..." and purporting to grant
> something that doesn't belong to the owner (the "Licensor") because
> former original owner put it into public domain. I suspect that it
> will be no less exciting than your piece on public domain analogizing
> waiver or abandonment of copyright to dumping of personal property in
> the public highway. :-)
> 
> regards,
> alexander.
> 
> --
> "12/21/2007 ORDER TO EXTEND TIME FOR DEFENDANT...
>  01/22/2008 ORDER TO EXTEND TIME FOR DEFENDANT...
>  02/19/2008 ORDER TO EXTEND TIME FOR DEFENDAT(sic)...
>  02/26/2008 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Laura Taylor Swain from
> Daniel B. Ravicher...
>  02/27/2008 ORDER that Defendants Verizon Communications, Inc. has
> until March 14, 2008..."
> 
>   -- 1:07-cv-11070-LTS aka Never Beginning "GPL Enforcement" case