Copyright and License

[Cliff Crawford]

* Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> menulis:
| 
| I don't see how, provided I don't copy *their* improvements verbatim.  Once
| copyright status is lost, it can't be regained:  the decision to put
| something in the public domain is irrevocable.  That means nobody-- not even
| me! --can ever assert copyright on something I release to the public domain.

I've actually heard the opposite said by people defending the GPL.
Supposedly if you release something as PD, or even with a BSD or other
license, then a Big Corporation can take your code, assert copyright on
it without even making any modifications or anything, and then sue you
for distributing "their" code.  So that's why everyone should use the
GPL.  At least, that's how their argument goes..

I don't really have the time or the legal expertise to sit down and read
copyright laws, and there's so many different interpretations of the GPL
that I'm wary of using that too.  So I just slap a BSD license on
everything and hope for the best :)  I think I'll look more into PD
though, it sounds like it's not as dangerous as I thought it was.


-- 
cliff crawford    -><-    http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
"One man's nirvana is another man's map."              icq 68165166