Revised License Committee Report for March 2009

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

wtfpl user <wtfpl.user at googlemail.com> writes:
> Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no> writes:
> > thing in Europe as in the US.  There is no provision in Norwegian law,
> > for instance, for placing a work in the public domain before the
> > expiration of the copyright term.
> http://creativecommons.org/license/zero/waiver

You completely missed the mark.  Distributing a work under CC0 does
*not* release it into the public domain.  In fact, CC0 exists
*precisely* because there is no way, in most countries, to release a
work in the public domain.  Even if there was, as any lawyer will tell
you, it's not a good idea to distribute somebody else's work or
incorporate it into your own unless you can document its provenance and
the author's explicit intent to release it into the public domain.

I suggest you google "ten myths about copyright" and read through the
top five or ten hits, then get a copy of your country's IP laws and read
through those.  Then, if you have the chance, get a job at a company
that uses open source software in a commercial product, wait until it
gets bought by a Fortune 500 company, and spend a couple of weeks
explaining to their due diligence people where every single line of code
came from and why it's OK to incorporate it into your own code base.
Very educational.  I promise you they won't like the WTFPL.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no