Re: [sqlite] Re: philosophy behind public domain?

As a german citizen I'll try you explain my understanding of my 
countries law. The basic concept should be similar within central Europe 
(Austria, France, Italy, Spain ... but not Great Britain) as most 
countries laws evolved from the Roman law . Sorry i am not a lawyer, 
just a programmer concerned with this question while living from his 
work but also giving parts of this work back to the community.

We have two different parts. One is called  'Urheberrecht' (right of 
author) and the other "Entscheidungs-" and/or "Verwertungsrecht" (right 
to decide  of usage and right to use) .

First one just handles the mental ownership of  a piece of work. This 
can not be  given to another party.  In many cases this is worth nothing 
as is just bundles your name with your work. Very often this right is 
incorrectly translated as Copyright even in European countries.

Second one handles the commercial and economical aspects. Of cause this 
is something total different. If you get paid for your work,  you 
sometimes loose this rights  to your  customer or employer immediatly.
If you still have this rights by your own  you are able to  
give/license/sell them like  every material thing.

As I unterstand  the american way the customer or employer get the 
unrestricted usage rights under almost all circumstances. Additionally 
the author seems to have no right to be mentioned at all.

Do not worry in casse an author tells you he gives you the right to use, 
to decide how to use AND(!!!) the right to modify it. You have all 
neccessary rights, except to remove the authors name (if it was there 
before!!!). Although this is just for the authors reputation/prestige 
even big companies have been accuessed to put back the name, to pay for 
unauthorized removal or stop usage immediatly.
Once again note, in Germany the right to modify code does not include 
removing the authors name.

Now most germans seems to accept the common GPL and BSD like copyrights. 
But I have problems understanding  many  restrictions/variatons of 
proprietary copyrights and just do not accept and use them.
In cases german citizens accepted a foreign license model ot contribute 
software, it would be nearly impossible to involve a German court 
whether for license nor for warranty aspects.

Stefan Finzel

D. Richard Hipp wrote:

>On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 21:01 +0200, Andreas Rottmann wrote:
>  
>
>>There is
>>no such thing as "disclaiming copyright" in Europe (or at least
>>Germany and Austria).
>>
>>Rotty
>>    
>>
>
>This would be a problem for any citizen of Germany or Austria
>that wanted to contribute code to the SQLite project.  I cannot
>see that this would ever be a problem for an SQLite users.
>
>Can citizens of Germany and Austria assign their copyright interest
>to third parties?  If so, then if you want to contribute code to
>SQLite, just assign the copyright to me and I will then dedicate
>the code to the public domain, which I can do since I am not a
>citizen of Austria or Germany.  If citizens of Germany and Austria
>are not allowed to assign copyright, then you will not be allowed
>to contribute code to SQLite regardless of what license SQLite uses.
>Either way, the fact that SQLite has been dedicated to the public
>domain seems unimportant.
>  
>