[License-discuss] Can copyrights be abandoned to the public domain?

[Richard Fontana]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:22:05AM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Richard Fontana (rfontana at redhat.com):
> 
> > I believe I am the counsel Tom is referring to, though the Fedora
> > policy conclusion Tom refers to was prepared by Tom. Nevertheless I
> > would see it as Fedora adopting more or less the liberal and pragmatic
> > view I have had on this subject for a long time. 
> 
> Seems reasonable to me.
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong (you're the professional), but I would imagine
> the relevant question for Red Hat, Inc. was not whether the erstwhile
> copyright owner actually succeeded in eradicating legal title to his/her
> copyright property (what is properly meant by 'public domain'), 

Yes. I agree with you that 'public domain' is a misnomer (but no more
than, say, the use of 'proprietary' to mean 'not free-as-in-freedom
software').

> but rather whether Red Hat, Inc. will be reasonably protected
> against infringement claims by either the owner's success or by
> estoppel.

Close enough, but I wouldn't want you to think Red Hat is just
concerned about Red Hat. We presume that software we consider open
source/free software allows certain permissions to everyone, not just
Red Hat, or we'd classify it otherwise.[1] The "public domain"-labeled
stuff we distribute in open source distribution contexts is code we
consider open source software (equivalent, essentially, to what is now
achievable through the quite detailed CC0). 

There are strange things I've seen in my time, like "public domain for
noncommercial purposes". We would treat that as
nonfree/non-open-source.

  - RF

[1]Incidentally, I seem to remember encountering at least one case of
a license that said the equivalent of "everyone *except* Red Hat is
free to use this code". Also not free software/open source. :)