Re: [boost] [mp_int] new release

Subject: Re: [boost] [mp_int] new release
From: Scott McMurray (me22.ca+boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-10-07 15:11:04

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 10:29, Kevin Sopp <baraclese_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> I can understand that two versions is a bad idea.
>>
>> But I am puzzled at your reluctance to claim copyright (and hence to use the Boost licence which deliberately gives all the rights
>> of a public domain thing - and frees you of all responsibility too).
>>
>> In many countries, if you have written it, you have copyright anyway.
>
> That's why you need to give it away explicitly to make it public domain.
>

"Just as there is nothing in the law that permits a person to dump
personal property in the public highway, there is nothing that permits
the dumping of intellectual property into the public domain — except
as happens in due course when any applicable copyrights expire.  Until
those copyrights expire, there is no mechanism in the law by which an
owner of software can simply elect to place it in the public domain."
~ From "Why the Public Domain Isn't a License", by Lawrence Rosen,
attorney and former OSI general counsel, at
http://rosenlaw.com/lj16.htm