- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 23:09:52 +0000 (GMT)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> original work Tim Berners-Lee did on HTML and HTTP was explicitly released > into the public domain by CERN (holders of the copyright as his employer at The CERN Web Server is not in the public domain, it has a licence that says something like "to the maximum extent possible W3C disclaims its rights". I think the reason for this statement is an acknowledgement that public domain is not actually possible. For normal software, attempting to disclaim copyright doesn't remove your liability for harm done by your software. Nearly every "free" software licence has a contractual term that only grants you rights if you accept that the author is not responsible for any harm done (usually in capitals and entitled DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES). I can't remember if the CERN Web Server has such a condition, but it is inadvisable to "give away" software without such a condition. IANAL. > Anyway, you can check the licenses of an open source product and see what it > says about images etc taht are part of the content... Anything under the GPL would have to have the images under the GPL otherwise you would have a non-functional program.
Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2002 02:40:08 UTC