Public domain software is not open-source?

[Philippe Verdy]

> De : Lawrence Rosen [mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com] 
> Envoyé : lundi 3 mars 2008 19:07
> À : 'License Discuss'
> Objet : RE: Public domain software is not open-source?
> 
> Alexander, 
> 
> This copyrighted email is hereby licensed under AFL 3.0. 
> Copying this email in violation of those license terms is 
> hereby prohibited.

You forgot to give the copyright notice (independantly of the licence
providing grants of use or transmission and forwarding)... You are in
trouble because of violation of your own terms by yourself!

Because I recieved your email from at least two third-parties (the
opensource.org site admin forwarding emails posted to this list, and my ISP
for receiving the email via SMTP and storing it in its own mailbox, before
deliving it to me later on mly request by POP3), they are also in violation.

Hmmmm... Email is subject to postal regulation and law, and considered as
private correspondance, even if it's sent to a "public" list. The copyright
law is difficult to use for emails, but the moral and derived author rights
are assumed, as well as other regulation by the email networking policy that
almost all ISP have accepted in the world with the RFC/BCP known as the
"netiquette". But an email is not sublicenciable by any recipient, or even
redistributable or freely modifiable, so it would break the AFL licence. The
netiquette, the postal laws and the AFL are not compatible with each other.
Don't expect any licence to become valid on emails in order to cover them.