Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis@systematicsw.ab.ca> writes:
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, [...]
There's a really interesting discussion of the differences between English and Scots law in terms of how you construct a public-domain-ish license by Andrew Katz (who is a lawyer, although I'm not) in the UK chapter of "The International FOSS Law Book", available from <http://ifosslawbook.org/uk/>. He writes: | [Scots law, following Roman law recognises the binding legal effect of | a unilateral promise without further formality] ... | | Scots Law does not require there to be consideration before there can | be a contract, so there would be no need to invoke principles of | personal bar [Personal bar is the equivalent principle in Scotland to | estoppel in England]. However, since a simple unilateral promise would | be effective in Scots Law, there seems little point in venturing into | the additional complications of bilateral contracts with a ius | quaesitum tertio. The other chapters of the book discuss the same question under other legal systems, where the answer appears to be even less straightforward... -- Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org> <http://offog.org/>