-=> andrew clarke wrote to Bob Jones <=-

 ac> It contains a lot of code not written by me that was released to the
 ac> public domain.  The licencing could not change without permission from
 ac> all of those people.

Being in the public domain means the code _has_ no license, is not
copyrighted, and can be re-released under the GPL or any other license
without permission. Strange but true. Of course, some people misuse the
term "public domain", and some idiots even label the same code with both
"Public domain" and "Copyright" notices, which contradict.

But anyway, if some of the code really is public domain, then you don't
_have_ to relicense that part for the package to qualify as Free, since
"public domain" also counts as a Free license. On the other hand, it's 
probably simpler to distribute the whole thing under one license.

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