[slime-devel] COPYRIGHT change - slime contributors please read this

[Bradford W Miller]

I don't think this is a good idea for two reasons. 1) you don't have the
right to put anything but your own work into the public domain (and even
then because of implicit copyrights, etc. even a dedication to the public
domain may not be sufficient). 2) by putting the work into the public
domain you lose all control over it - someone else can sell it, and take
credit for it for instance, and the author (or anyone else for that
matter) will have no recourse.

For some information on how to put something in the public domain, see:

http://www.fin.ucar.edu/legal/faq_publicdomain.html

I don't want to discourage you from putting your work into the public
domain (assuming it is possible), but rather note that your statement that
something is in the public domain carries no weight if it is not owned by
you in the first place. Copyright, is in fact implicit when a work is
fixed (i.e. written to disk), so it is held by the author (or in the case
of a work for hire, by the client) regardless of having an explicit
notice.

If you want to put something into the public domain, you will at the very
least have to have the author submit a statement of dedication to that
effect.

Brad Miller


-----Original Message-----
From: slime-devel-bounces at common-lisp.net
[mailto:slime-devel-bounces at common-lisp.net] On Behalf Of mb at bese.it
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 5:54 PM
To: slime-devel at common-lisp.net
Subject: [slime-devel] COPYRIGHT change - slime contributors please read
this


hi,

  I have changed the license statement in SLIME's README. it used to be:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
  SLIME is free software. The source files are licensed separately for
  maximum compatibility with their host environment, for example
  slime.el is GPL and swank-cmucl.lisp is public domain. See the
  source files for more details.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is now this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
  SLIME is free software. All files, unless explicitly stated
  otherwise, are public domain.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

So if you've contributed code to SLIME and haven't supplied a
copyright statement your code is now public domain. If you have an
issue with this please bring it up asap.

For what it's worth the only files which were missing a copyright
statement were swank-ecl.lisp, doc/Makefile, HACKING, NEWS, PROBLEMS
and README. juan jose garcia (the original author of swank-ecl.lisp)
is ok with the change so I don't think anyone should be surprised be
this change.

-- 
-Marco
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
	-Leonard Cohen

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