Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote:
> >> If all you want is SQLite under an MIT license, have someone who lives
> >> in a country that recognizes public domain just copy and relicense under
> >> the MIT terms.
> > 
> >   Can works in the public domain be re-copyrighted?
> > 

> It isn't re-copyrighting the work. It is relicensing the work, which is
> usually allowable under public domain laws.

  Licensing (including eg. the MIT license) is based on copyright. Thus
if you want to license something, you have to own its copyright.

> Otherwise, how could you
> incorporate some public domain code into work and then distribute under
> a commercial license?

  Your *changes* have copyright, not the original material.

  If one could re-copyright PD works, then anyone could take such a work
and hijack its copyrights for himself, stopping anyone from using it.

  However, if someone takes a PD work and changes it somehow, the changes
have copyright and nobody can use those changes unless given permission.

  Of course in the case of the SQLite library you could go and change
everything and claim copyright on it. How much you have to change in order
for the copyright claim to be enforceable, I don't know.

  But AFAIK it's rather clear that if you don't have copyright, you can't
license it either, because licenses are based on copyright.

> 'I am allowed to authorize this work to be licensed'.

  But are you? And doesn't this depend on the jurisdiction? (Remember, we
are talking, after all, about jurisdictions which don't recognize PD as a
valid software license. This making assumptions about what you can and
cannot do with PD software is kind of moot.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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