Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 11:51:06 -0700 From: "Mark Atwood" <mark.atwood@gmail.com> Message-ID: <25a51bf5-22c1-425d-90c6-1b86cc8f977d@www.fastmail.com> | Looking at the TZ database history, If we're just considering tzdata... | it has a very long history with lots of contributors, | its mostly just a collection of facts, There are two aspects, the data itself, and the form in which it is presented. The data is just facts, and it makes no sense to license any of that (in any way at all) or to apply anything to indicate that status. If I were to tell you that today is Tuesday, and consequently tomorrow is Wednesday, would I also need to issue you some kind of licence (however identified) before you could use that information? The very concept is absurd. On the other hand, the form in which it is presented could very likely be subject to copyright, and could be protected - but for that there are only a small number of authors (perhaps really just one or two) - most of the contributors simply state facts, which are then converted into the appropriate form - and those who don't could just as easily be considered to be breaching copyright (were any asserted) by copying the form to use rather than owning any rights to that form themselves, kind of like making a copy of a form and filling it in, assuming the information supplied is not subject to copyright, then the fact that it is on a form that is means nothing as far as the person filling in the form is concerned (but they could have breached the copyright owner's rights when they copied the form). So: because of the need to get the past contributors to assent, for tzdata that is not a real issue, there are actually only a small number, and those have already indicated assent by placing the "public domain" notice in the files in the first place - but can easily be asked again. What matters more, though to less people, is tzcode, that is all copyrightable (but all intended to be available to anyone, for free, no restrictions at all, no responsibility at all) and does have a much larger number of actual contributors of code that could be subject tp copyrights (but all being donated to the project). kre