Re: License questions

From: Roger Schlafly (rogersc_at_mindspring.com)
Date: 08/14/03 

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 01:45:56 GMT

"Isaac" <isaac@latveria.castledoom.org> wrote
> > (1) An author unilaterally and irrevocably dedicating his work
> > to the public domain, with no strings attached.
> > (2) An author unilaterally and irrevocably dedicating his work
> > to the public, subject to a complicated set of conditions in an
> > attached license.
> > Fairbrother's theory is that (2) is legal, but (1) is not. That just
> > doesn't make any sense to me. I think that he is not only wrong,
> > but I don't even see how the law could be written that way.
> As for other ways to write the law to make (1) true, it would be
> easy to come up with simple legal requirements that would not
> allow transferring or revoking rights without naming the person
> or entity to whom they are being transferred.

Sure, but that would also knock out GPL, Msft EULA, and most
of the other licenses in use. Not an option.

> Another way to make it (1) impossible is to make some right of
> the copyright holder (like for example the reversion right)
> unassignable.

I don't get it. Some law is going to say that you can license
away 99% of your copyright rights, but not 100%? The main
practical difference between the PD dedication and the BSD
license is that the BSD license retains some rather trivial rights
while giving the rest away.

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