Full Disclosure: Re: New open source Security Framework

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:34:00 -0300, root said:

> You don't have the faintest idea of how licencing works. You cannot slap
> a GPL v3 license to any software you see, much less erase the author's
> names. If you find a code in the internet without any license, you
> pretty much can't touch it, and must re-implement it completely.
In particular, if code was written in a country that's a signatory to the Berne
conventions, it's usually somewhere between very difficult and impossible to
actually place a software work in the public domain - at least under US law,
even putting an explicit "This work is hereby placed in the public domain"
quite likely does *NOT* suffice - the only two clear ways to public domain in
the US are expiration of the "lifetime of the author plus 75 years" copyright,
and "works for hire by a US federal government employee as part of his duties"
(so, for instance, NASA photographs are public domain - but photos of NASA
activities taken by non-NASA photographers probably aren't).

Also, smart programmers *don't* release their code into the public domain -
that means that anybody can do anything with it. And that includes stealing it,
using it to make tons of money, and then suing you if they discover a bug.  The
original reason for the BSD and X11 licenses was because you can't stick a
"hold harmless" clause on something you public-domain.

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