On 2016-02-17 19:29, Russ Allbery wrote:
Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:
On 02/17/2016 04:16 PM, Tim Parenti wrote:
| "In addition, the authors (on behalf of themselves and their | employers) hereby relinquish any claim to any copyright that they | may have in this work, whether granted under contract or by | operation of law or international treaty, and hereby commit to the | public, at large, that they shall not, at any time in the future, | seek to enforce any copyright in this work against any person or | entity, or prevent any person or entity from copying, publishing, | distributing or creating derivative works of this work."
My understanding of the legal mechanism behind this statement is that it attempts to establish via estoppel the effect of public domain even in legal regimes that don't have that concept.
This does not seem to apply to civil law regimes which do not have the concept of estoppel e.g. Scotland, Quebec, continental Europe, about 2/3 of the world, where property rights are statutory so cannot be relinquished or waived but can only be granted to others. This is limited depending on the statutes in each jurisdiction, both civil and common law, where harm may need to be proved, and may have to be wilful, or if negligent, in a statutory regulated profession or trade: so most students, academics, software developers may be okay, but e.g. engineers could be liable under some conditions. IANAL but between contracts and Groklaw, learned "stuff I shouldn't need to know" (tm) I am sure many of us feel this way nowadays about patents, IPR, and licensing. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada