@@ -396,59 +396,59 @@ public domain,'' or any phrase that implies the copyright holder gave
express permission to take actions governed by copyright law.
Copyright holders who state that they are releasing their code into
the public domain are effectively renouncing copyright controls on
the work. The law gave the copyright holder exclusive controls over the
work, and they chose to waive those controls. Software that is, in
this sense, in the public domain
is conceptualized by the developer as having no copyright and thus no license. The software freedoms discussed in
Section~\ref{Free Software Definition} are all granted because there is no
legal system in play to take them away.
Admittedly, a discussion of public domain software is an oversimplified
example.
Because copyright controls are usually automatically granted and because, in
some jurisdictions, some copyright controls cannot be waived (See
Section~\ref{non-usa-copyright} for further discussion), many copyright
holders sometimes incorrectly believe a work has been placed in the public
domain. Second, due to aggressive lobbying by the entertainment industry,
the ``exclusive Right'' of copyright, that was supposed to only exist for
``Limited Times'' according to the USA Constitution, appears to be infinite:
simply purchased on the installment plan rather than in whole. Thus, we must
assume no works of software will fall into the public domain merely due to
the passage of time.
Nevertheless, under US law it is likely that the typical
Nevertheless, under USA law it is likely that the typical
disclaimers of copyright or public domain dedications we see in the
Free Software world would be interpreted by courts as copyright
abandonment, leading to a situation in which the user effectively receives a
maximum grant of copyright freedoms, similar to a maximally-permissive
Free Software license.
The best example of software known to truly be in the public domain is software
that is published by the US government. Under
that is published by the USA government. Under
\href{http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105}{17 USC 101 \S~105}, all
works published by the USA Government are not copyrightable in the US.
works published by the USA Government are not copyrightable in the USA.
\subsection{Why Copyright Free Software?}
If simply disclaiming copyright on software yields Free Software, then it
stands to reason that putting software into the public domain is the
easiest and most straightforward way to produce Free Software. Indeed,
some major Free Software projects have chosen this method for making their
software Free. However, most of the Free Software in existence \emph{is}
copyrighted. In most cases (particularly in those of FSF and the GNU
Project), this was done due to very careful planning.
Software released into the public domain does grant freedom to those users
who receive the standard versions on which the original author disclaimed
copyright. However, since the work is not copyrighted, any nontrivial
modification made to the work is fully copyrightable.
Free Software released into the public domain initially is Free, and
perhaps some who modify the software choose to place their work into the
public domain as well. However, over time, some entities will choose to
proprietarize their modified versions. The public domain body of software
feeds the proprietary software. The public commons disappears, because
fewer and fewer entities have an incentive to contribute back to the
commons. They know that any of their competitors can proprietarize their
enhancements. Over time, almost no interesting work is left in the public