> entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another.
Sure, that's true. The intent of the law is to give a special carve-out for, in essence, Free and Open Source software. It seems clear that it was deliberately written so as not to include proprietary freeware, say.
> We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or public domain software anyway typically do it with full knowledge of such arguments.
Like what? Really, it's very rare for code to be released into the public domain like this. I've never seen a compelling argument for doing so. If your intention is to make the code available to all, to do with as they wish, the legal reality is that the best way to achieve this is to release the software under a permissive licence, rather than releasing it to the public domain.
If the exemption really doesn't cover public domain software, that presumably means that, as the copyrights on Free and Open Source software eventually expire and they enter the public domain, they will no longer be exempt. Again though this isn't of practical concern.
edit Come to think of it, publicly available software developed by the US federal government is released into the public domain, right? There doesn't seem to be much software like this though.
djb's software is the canonical example here: qmail, djbdns, etc. Widely used; distributed without explicit license until 2007, and placed in the public domain thereafter. No legal disputes ever arose from this.
Of course Bernstein isn't about to file lawsuits against his users, given his motives, but (prior to the public domain dedication) he might have stood a chance in court if people were downloading and using his copyrighted software without a licence. Under modern copyright law, all rights are reserved 'by default' (at least in the US). I'm not sure if a case like that has ever ended up in court, but I can't imagine any corporate lawyer signing off on acquiring and using software in that fashion.
An absence of lawsuits is not the yardstick for success here anyway. It's possible the public domain dedication deterred adoption compared to using a permissive FOSS licence. Consider Google's caution about public domain software for instance [0]. It could also be possible for software to be adopted but, if tested in future, this could be found to be legally murky.
If your intention is to make the code available to all, to do with as they wish, there's no legitimate reason to release it to the public domain rather than just using a permissive licence. If anyone with a deep knowledge of copyright law disagrees on this point, I'd be interested if you could post a link.
I'm not clear if you're doubting the correctness of what I said in my previous comment. I'm not making this stuff up, I already gave sources. The Creative Commons CC0 licence was created purely to address the legal complexities of the public domain. [1][2] (For other reasons of legal nuance, Creative Commons licences should not be used for software works, [3] but the point stands.)
> I'm not clear if you're doubting the correctness of what I said in my previous comment.
I don't dispute any of the factual or legal claims you've made. I even agree that a FOSS license is probably the best choice if the author's goal is to protect the user from the scenario where they turn evil and renege on their gift of code to the public.
In situations where I'm the author, this isn't always my goal. You know that Bernstein isn't going to go after his users, and I know that I'm not going to go after mine. Most users aren't going to be concerned about this possibility, either. Those who are concerned about it are likely to be for-profit corporations or their lawyers, and I'm not losing any sleep over making them nervous or losing them as users. I don't care to over-formalize things by invoking or even acknowledging IP law in my act of publication.
Each author's motives and goals are going to vary. It's not reasonable to enforce that "maximize assurances provided to user" is always at the top of the list for everyone.
Sure, that's true. The intent of the law is to give a special carve-out for, in essence, Free and Open Source software. It seems clear that it was deliberately written so as not to include proprietary freeware, say.
> We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or public domain software anyway typically do it with full knowledge of such arguments.
Like what? Really, it's very rare for code to be released into the public domain like this. I've never seen a compelling argument for doing so. If your intention is to make the code available to all, to do with as they wish, the legal reality is that the best way to achieve this is to release the software under a permissive licence, rather than releasing it to the public domain.
If the exemption really doesn't cover public domain software, that presumably means that, as the copyrights on Free and Open Source software eventually expire and they enter the public domain, they will no longer be exempt. Again though this isn't of practical concern.
edit Come to think of it, publicly available software developed by the US federal government is released into the public domain, right? There doesn't seem to be much software like this though.
Direct link to the text of the bill: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1856/id/3456513