In short... all I did was formally declare that the CC'd work was now in the Public Domain. Are we clear now?The person or persons who have associated work with this document (the "Dedicator" or "Certifier") hereby either (a) certifies that, to the best of his knowledge, the work of authorship identified is in the public domain of the country from which the work is published, or (b) hereby dedicates whatever copyright the dedicators holds in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the public domain. A certifier, moreover, dedicates any copyright interest he may have in the associated work, and for these purposes, is described as a "dedicator" below.
A certifier has taken reasonable steps to verify the copyright status of this work. Certifier recognizes that his good faith efforts may not shield him from liability if in fact the work certified is not in the public domain.
Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of the Dedicator's heirs and successors. Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work. Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.
Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
Licenses and your mods
Moderator: Moderators
The Debian folks need to read the CC license I used. Declaring it GPL will not be a problem:
@Argh:
Well, "relicensing" is probably not as easily possible, since no one actually claims to have a copyright. One has to create a sufficiently different derivate work before one can get copyright and assign a different license (may differ in some countries).
BTW, you actually couldn't resign your copyright in some countries even if you wanted to, and in some of these, you automatically have the copyright to your works as well
. That's probably why there's sort of a second component in the CC-public domain license, stating that you allow everything and will sue no one.
Either way, not being to relicense or the other stuff wouldn't appear to be problematic; the GPL is fully compatible with public domain, and Debian allows it as well. See here ("Public Domain") and here.
I also think it may be worthwhile to ask again.
Well, "relicensing" is probably not as easily possible, since no one actually claims to have a copyright. One has to create a sufficiently different derivate work before one can get copyright and assign a different license (may differ in some countries).
BTW, you actually couldn't resign your copyright in some countries even if you wanted to, and in some of these, you automatically have the copyright to your works as well
. That's probably why there's sort of a second component in the CC-public domain license, stating that you allow everything and will sue no one.Either way, not being to relicense or the other stuff wouldn't appear to be problematic; the GPL is fully compatible with public domain, and Debian allows it as well. See here ("Public Domain") and here.
I also think it may be worthwhile to ask again.
I agree that the CC website isn´t very good for getting to the licences. I actually got there: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by searching for creative commons on wikipedia and then following the link they had (I do that more often than searching on google :D).
Anyway, I had obviously forgotten the no derivative versions and some of the combinations when I wrote my list.
Also quite obviously, there is no such thing as CC-PD (unless the CC stands for something other than creative commons) ....
By the way, for those who are still uncertain about the meaning of the GNU General public licence (GNU GPL), in my understanding it roughly works out to be the same as this: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0/
Anyway, I had obviously forgotten the no derivative versions and some of the combinations when I wrote my list.
Also quite obviously, there is no such thing as CC-PD (unless the CC stands for something other than creative commons) ....
By the way, for those who are still uncertain about the meaning of the GNU General public licence (GNU GPL), in my understanding it roughly works out to be the same as this: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0/
Hm, I thought I heard of a C-PD license (Creative Commons - Public Domain) but Argh posted a snippet there that does seem to be his license (and essentially says "this work is public domain").Tobi wrote:Could you point me to a copy of the CC-PD (preferably on their official website) to pass the link on to the debian games team? I can't find it on the CC website, it really sucks.. can't find any usable info on it...
This should be the license.
EDIT: Also note this page, where you can file the license.
"Please note that the Public Domain Dedication may not be valid outside of the United States."
It's really just the question whether the "all-permissive" lines of the license are applicable in case the public domain part isn't. I felt confident that it would probably hold the last time I posted, but I'm not so sure anymore... better ask the Debian lawyers.
EDIT: Also note this page, where you can file the license.
"Please note that the Public Domain Dedication may not be valid outside of the United States."
It's really just the question whether the "all-permissive" lines of the license are applicable in case the public domain part isn't. I felt confident that it would probably hold the last time I posted, but I'm not so sure anymore... better ask the Debian lawyers.
Well since you are the copyright holder you can decide to release a GPL version and a CC version.
Obviously tho, if someone gives you an improvement on the GPL version, you can't put it in the CC version unless this contributor signs his copyright away to you, or you can override him to release his modifications as CC too.
Obviously tho, if someone gives you an improvement on the GPL version, you can't put it in the CC version unless this contributor signs his copyright away to you, or you can override him to release his modifications as CC too.
Ok, sorry for have been joking about there being no CC-PD, my mistake. What still holds true though (as someone else stated earlier), is that in at least some countries (Germany for example), it is legally not possible to "sign away" your copyright (at least not into the public domain), and that that licence therefore is not, erm, very well suited to being used in the long term.