> a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software
which at least doesn't choose specific winners and losers among licenses. It does disfavor license-free and public domain software, which isn't great.
Technically you could argue that public domain works don't have license terms that make them free so the exception can't apply. Only an ignorant or ultra literalist judge would see it that way but you never know.
On the other hand a public domain dedication is a binding term that gives you permission (or license) to do what you want...
It only applies to software distributed under a license. Public domain software isn't distributed under a license. It's in the public domain; no license is needed.
Sure, but of minimal practical impact. The Free and Open Source community has long discouraged releasing software into the public domain, as it has clear drawbacks compared to just using a permissive licence. The legal intricacies of the public domain vary between jurisdictions. Not all jurisdictions even allow copyrights to be surrendered in this way. [0]
Licence-free isn't a concern. That isn't even close to Free and Open source software, it's the opposite: software that you aren't permitted to acquire, use, modify, or distribute. [1][2]
This is exactly what GP was talking about: entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another. We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or public domain software anyway typically do it with full knowledge of such arguments.
> entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another.
Sure, that's true. The intent of the law is to give a special carve-out for, in essence, Free and Open Source software. It seems clear that it was deliberately written so as not to include proprietary freeware, say.
> We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or public domain software anyway typically do it with full knowledge of such arguments.
Like what? Really, it's very rare for code to be released into the public domain like this. I've never seen a compelling argument for doing so. If your intention is to make the code available to all, to do with as they wish, the legal reality is that the best way to achieve this is to release the software under a permissive licence, rather than releasing it to the public domain.
If the exemption really doesn't cover public domain software, that presumably means that, as the copyrights on Free and Open Source software eventually expire and they enter the public domain, they will no longer be exempt. Again though this isn't of practical concern.
edit Come to think of it, publicly available software developed by the US federal government is released into the public domain, right? There doesn't seem to be much software like this though.
djb's software is the canonical example here: qmail, djbdns, etc. Widely used; distributed without explicit license until 2007, and placed in the public domain thereafter. No legal disputes ever arose from this.
Of course Bernstein isn't about to file lawsuits against his users, given his motives, but (prior to the public domain dedication) he might have stood a chance in court if people were downloading and using his copyrighted software without a licence. Under modern copyright law, all rights are reserved 'by default' (at least in the US). I'm not sure if a case like that has ever ended up in court, but I can't imagine any corporate lawyer signing off on acquiring and using software in that fashion.
An absence of lawsuits is not the yardstick for success here anyway. It's possible the public domain dedication deterred adoption compared to using a permissive FOSS licence. Consider Google's caution about public domain software for instance [0]. It could also be possible for software to be adopted but, if tested in future, this could be found to be legally murky.
If your intention is to make the code available to all, to do with as they wish, there's no legitimate reason to release it to the public domain rather than just using a permissive licence. If anyone with a deep knowledge of copyright law disagrees on this point, I'd be interested if you could post a link.
I'm not clear if you're doubting the correctness of what I said in my previous comment. I'm not making this stuff up, I already gave sources. The Creative Commons CC0 licence was created purely to address the legal complexities of the public domain. [1][2] (For other reasons of legal nuance, Creative Commons licences should not be used for software works, [3] but the point stands.)
> I'm not clear if you're doubting the correctness of what I said in my previous comment.
I don't dispute any of the factual or legal claims you've made. I even agree that a FOSS license is probably the best choice if the author's goal is to protect the user from the scenario where they turn evil and renege on their gift of code to the public.
In situations where I'm the author, this isn't always my goal. You know that Bernstein isn't going to go after his users, and I know that I'm not going to go after mine. Most users aren't going to be concerned about this possibility, either. Those who are concerned about it are likely to be for-profit corporations or their lawyers, and I'm not losing any sleep over making them nervous or losing them as users. I don't care to over-formalize things by invoking or even acknowledging IP law in my act of publication.
Each author's motives and goals are going to vary. It's not reasonable to enforce that "maximize assurances provided to user" is always at the top of the list for everyone.
IMHO, FM radio stations, broadcasting on government-attributed radio frequencies, are very different - both in nature and in how they feel - from the user of a big corporation's service streaming from someone else's computers.
For rich link previews, OpenGraph[0] is much more often supported than JSON-LD.
For seo purpose, the kind of JSON-LD a search engine will support is very specific and limited. You are far better consulting the targetted search engine's documentation (Google[1], Bing[2]) and following that. Anything else is a waste of time.
Outside of search engines, again, without a specific purpose, JSON-LD is mostly useless. If you have a specific need that requires JSON-LD, go ahead and include the data you know will be useful. Including anything else is like shouting into the void.
IndieWeb[3] does use structured data but considers JSON-LD a DRY violation and uses Microformats[4] instead.
Becauae "spirit of the law" doesnt exist. It is a saying used by people when they want to do something that isnt in the law. You dont see lawyers, judges or law makers use the phrase.
> Becauae "spirit of the law" doesnt exist. It is a saying used by people when they want to do something that isnt in the law. You dont see lawyers, judges or law makers use the phrase.
This is dependent on jurisdiction. Some countries (e.g. the USA) do not consider spirit/intent (anymore), as the judiciary has repeatedly ruled that the letter of the law, as written, is what matters, regardless of whether it meets the intent of what the law was written to achieve.
There are other countries in the world, outside of the USA, that do not work this way.
Intent is expressed through drafter's notes or explanations. "Spirit" is somerhing else, something made up later by people who had nothing to do with th3 creation of the law.
> The letter of the law and the spirit of the law are two ways of interpreting rules or laws. To obey the "letter of the law" is to follow the literal reading of the words of the law, whereas following the "spirit of the law" is to follow the intention of why the law was enacted.
It is always a good sign of modernity and relevance when the half an article's citations are to either the bible or the Talmude. And who can forget the legal touchstone that was the 1975 Systems Engineering Conference ... in Vegas.
> New combinations of circumstances — that is, new cases — constantly call for the application, which means in truth the extension of old principles; or, it may be, even for the thinking out of some new principle, in harmony with the general spirit of the law, fitted to meet the novel requirements of the time.
Old Slashdot had the right ideas. You could mark anyone as friend or foe. If somone marked you as friend, it was your fan. If someone marked you as foe, it was your freak. Then you could make your friends', foes', fans' and freaks' posts more or less visible, as you wished.
There was no "like" for posts but a much more evolved system: you could brand posts as interresting, informative, insightful, funny, underrated, overrated, flamebait or troll.
Slashdot was never a social media, but it sure had a few features that could have been used to turn it into an interresting one.
