Discussion:
Errata in 'Dissecting the Unlicense'
Marius Kempe
2011-02-23 15:03:44 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

I love the Unlicense and have started using it for my small scientific
projects. I noticed one piece of errata in 'Dissecting the
Unlicense' (http://ar.to/2010/01/dissecting-the-unlicense) that I
So, yes, you are perfectly welcome to incorporate the code into proprietary software. Yes, you can relicense the code
under any license you please. No, you don't need to include any original copyright statements (there are none) or a copy
of the Unlicense. No, you don't need to give attribution to the original authors -- though as a matter of common courtesy
you probably should be doing so!
I don't think that you can, in general, legally relicense code, or any
content, that has been put into the public domain, because this
implies you are claiming copyright over it. This makes it copyfraud.
As evidence I submit the Wikipedia entry on copyfraud -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/copyfraud - and this article by a legal
scholar, pointing out how common copyfraud is today and arguing that
it is a major problem: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787244

So I would advocate changing this line ASAP.

Best,
Marius

PS. I am not a lawyer.

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