Comment 2 for bug 977460

On 04/09/2012 03:25 PM, Erik Ogenvik wrote:
> It's actually licensed under two licenses: the CPOL as specified at the bottom (seems to be boilerplate) and Public Domain as specified in the "License" part of the article.
> The exact wording is: "The source code attached to this article is released into the public domain. You may use it for any purpose."
>
> Do you think that's enough for Debian Legal?

I do not believe so.

"Public Domain" is a statement of who has copyright, not a distribution license.

It is next to impossible to actually put something into the public domain in most of the world. See
http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/08/msg00005.html. There may be procedures in some countries for the author
to take legal steps to release the copyright of his work into the public domain, but there is no evidence in this case
that the author has done so. Simply making a statement to the effect in an online article is not enough for the author
to have formally relinquished his natural rights. He continues to hold copyright regardless, and all the evidence is
that it is distributed under the The Code Project Open License, which is considered non-free by the FSF and incompatible
with the Gnu Public License.

--
Stephen M. Webb <email address hidden>
https://launchpad.net/~bregma