| Public Domain | 2002-11-13 04:38 2 comments |
 by Flemming FunchAndrius Kulikauskas dared me to put my weblog here into the "Primarily Public Domain", and after a bit of thought I decided that, yes, of course that would be the right thing. I believe very much in ideas and writings and creative works being in the public domain. Public domain means that there are no copyrights, no exclusive rights, and that the resource is owned by the community at large. That's the easiest way of ensuring that the resource is available for anybody who needs or wants it, and that it can be automatically included in libraries gathered for the common good. For software there are some additional concerns. Specifically, if one desires free software to remain free, even when modified, the "copy-left" license might be the best idea. With substantial things I've written in the past, like my Transformational Processing books, I've previously chosen to mark them as copyrighted, adding that they can be freely copied and distributed for any non-commercial purpose. But I think public domain probably makes it more clear to people that they're free to use it. Many people contact me, asking for permission, just because they see the word "copyright". And I really don't mind at all that people quote or copy what I write, even in books that people pay for, or classes that cost money. As a matter of fact I'm flattered that they would want to. For good public domain resources see for example: ibiblio or Wikipedia |