-=> andrew clarke wrote to William McBrine <=-

 ac> No, artistic works can't be copyrighted once they enter the public
 ac> domain.

Material in the public domain of course remains in the public domain. But
since there is no copyright, it can be freely incorporated into a larger
work, with that work as a whole being copyrighted (under any terms). In
other words, code that's public domain is never in conflict with any
software license.

 ac> Also, lately I've been lead to believe that effectively the only way
 ac> artistic works can lawfully enter the "public domain" is
by the author
 ac> dying and the copyright expiring after N years, ie. attaching "Written
 ac> by Andrew Clarke and released to the public domain" to a document has
 ac> no legal meaning, and I still have legal control over the copyright
 ac> until I die, then there is a grace period (for the family of the
 ac> author).

How have you been led to believe that?

 ac> Then any program that statically links the GPLed MSGAPI would need to
 ac> be GPL'd also, AFAIK.

Sounds good to me. :-)

... Your E-Mail was returned due to insufficient voltage
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.44