>Re-licensing public domain work as GPL/LGPL is almost certainly a copyright violation
replyRemember kids never get your legal advice from hn comments.
I hire specialized IP lawyers to advise me how to mitigate risk: One can't assign licenses on something no one can legally claim right to. You should do the same unless you live in India or China.
replyDon't become the cautionary tale kid, as crawlers like sriplaw.com will be DMCA striking your public repos eventually. =3
> Being in the public domain is not a license; rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed. Practically speaking, though, if a work is in the public domain, it might as well have an all-permissive non-copyleft free software license. Public domain material is compatible with the GNU GPL.
replyYes, if it is clearly labeled as such, than GPL/LGPL licenced works may be included in such products. However, this relationship cannot make such works GPL without violating copyright, and doesn't magically become yours to re-license isomorphic plagiarized code from LLM.
replyFor example, one may use NASA public domain photos as you wish, but cannot register copyright under another license you find convenient to sue people. Also, if that public domain photo includes the Nutella trademark, it doesn't protect you from getting sued for violating Ferrero trademarks/patents/copyrights in your own use-case.
Very different than slapping a new label on something you never owned. =3
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