[ANNOUNCE] hg describe extension (bug fixed)

[Matt Mackall]

On Sat, 2008-10-18 at 09:25 -0400, Sean Russell wrote:
> On Thursday 16 October 2008 04:48:27 Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> > On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:30:03 +0200, "Benoit Boissinot" <bboissin at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> > > On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Sean Russell <hg at ser1.net> wrote:
> > >> On Monday 13 October 2008 21:30:07 Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> ...
> > > Does it mean the code is now in the public domain? (it isn't clear,
> > > and at least in country you can't strip a copyright like that).
> 
> *I* didn't strip the copyright; Michael did.  I don't know what that means in 
> your country.
> 
> There seems to be some confusion about the quoted text at the bottom of my 
> email, below the part where I said, "I'm also quoting the email that Michael 
> sent me the file with, for context:".  The part that starts with "Michael 
> Kleehammer, on 2008-08-19" is a quote _of_ Michael.
> 
> > I seem to have lost the quoted message by Sean, but I fully agree that
> > licensing should be carefully handled.  We don't want to alienate
> > Michael, and we certainly don't want to make it harder of even
> > impossible to officially import `describe.py' as an Hg extension in the
> > future--licensed in GPLv2 like the rest of Mercurial.
> 
> Again, to be absolutely clear, Michael removed his copyright.  I believe that 
> he's allowed to do that.  If you have any doubts, you can search through the 
> mailing list archives and find his email address, and ask him yourself to 
> verify this.

I believe this has null effect in countries that are signatories to the
Bern convention. You have to explicitly disclaim copyright.

And as it happens, putting something in the public domain is actually
worse than making it explicitly open source for software: the latter
disclaims liability while the former doesn't.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.