alt Hacker NewsThe bill exempts:
> a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software
which at least doesn't choose specific winners and losers among licenses. It does disfavor license-free and public domain software, which isn't great.
Replies
pritambaral • yesterday at 6:58 AM
> It does disfavor license-free and public domain software, which isn't great.
Public domain software is free to "copy, redistribute, and modify", so ... where's the disfavour?
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Sure, but of minimal practical impact. The Free and Open Source community has long discouraged releasing software into the public domain, as it has clear drawbacks compared to just using a permissive licence. The legal intricacies of the public domain vary between jurisdictions. Not all jurisdictions even allow copyrights to be surrendered in this way. [0]
Licence-free isn't a concern. That isn't even close to Free and Open source software, it's the opposite: software that you aren't permitted to acquire, use, modify, or distribute. [1][2]
[0] https://opensource.org/blog/public-domain-is-not-open-source
[1] https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/
[2] https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...