What is the difference between licensing a program under the MIT license (or the BSD one) and putting it in the public domain?
+2
A:
The MIT license does place some requirements on the consumer of the code, such as
"The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."
If you put code into the public domain, there are no requirements on the code's consumer at all.
anon
2009-08-24 14:41:57
Is that required even if you use the Software in binary form without including source?
cool-RR
2009-08-24 16:27:22
There has been some discussion here on the subject. My position is "no", but others disagree. But really, until the license is tested in a court (something I think unlikely to ever happen) nobody knows for sure.
anon
2009-08-24 17:05:04
+4
A:
Public domain is not represented very well internationally (it doesn't exist in many countries outside the US), and as such you should always place a license on your code.
thekidder
2009-08-24 14:44:10
+1, because I've heard that at least some lawyers say this (and because a few are confused by public domain even within the US). Oh, and the MIT license also contains quite a few disclaimers.
emk
2009-08-24 15:03:39
I doubt also that a file written in English is really a contract legally enforceable internationally. For example, there are ≈200 countries in the world, but Creative Commons licenses are ported to jurisdictions of only ≈50 of them.
jetxee
2010-02-15 22:11:13
If you want to effectively have a public domain release, go for the WTF license.
TRiG
2010-10-14 19:52:37
A:
The main point is that the BSD license allows the authors to retain copyright to their work, and to ensure they receive due credit as authors in the source code, by requiring attribution as part of the license notice. If you put work into the public domain, you explicitly give up all rights to its reproduction or use, including attribution.
There is some useful clarification of the differences between the two situations on the Net-BSD site.
ire_and_curses
2009-08-24 14:56:36