Re: notices for CC0

[John Darrington]

On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 07:35:26AM -0400, Ineiev wrote:
     On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 07:17:02AM -0400, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
     > CC0 is not a "copyright" license, so the text "Copyright (c)" makes
     > little sense since the goal is to put the work into the Public Domain
     > -- i.e. no copyright applied.
     
     Strictly speaking, the Public Domain consists of works that are old
     enough or made by the US or so; CC0 emulates it using copyright
     as the means.
     
     > As to what Creative Commons and FSF recommend for non-GNU projects is
     > kinda not relevant to what GNU projects are recommended to do by the
     > FSF.
     
     So should GNU maintainers add copyright lines to CC0d files? what
     about non-gnu Savannah programs? which recommendation applies to them?
     what should the hosting requirement be (we routinely point
     to GNU Maintainer Info to tell how software should be packaged)?

I don't think GNU programs should have any non-trivial files CC0.  

I don't know what the policy is for for non-gnu projects on savannah.  It's
ok to point to GNU Maintainer Info as a "best practices" hint.  But as I
understand it GNU requirements are generally more strict than non-gnu.

As Alfred and yourself have alluded; there is a lot of debate about weather
"dedicating" a work to the public domain is even possible.  In some countries
it is certainly possible.  In others it is certainly not. And in others,
jurists disagree.

For this reason, CC0 includes a "Public Fallback License" just in case the
attempt to place it in the public domain fails.  So my opinion is, that CC0
works should indeed have the word "Copyright" in the header.

Due to the very dubious legal nature of CC0 I would discourage anyone from 
trying to use it.

J'




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