Why does Google Code say YARD is under the MIT license, but Sourceforge says it's public domain?

All code in YARD has been released as public domain code through the project hosted on Sourceforge. However, Google Code will only host projects that are released under specific licenses. Additionally, some lawyers do not believe it is possible to release something into the public domain under current US law ("Under the 1976 Act as amended, the only two ways that a work can enter the public domain are expiration of term and failure of fixation"). And, according to the SQLite project, some legal systems don't seem to recognize the idea of public domain.

Finally, it is common to take a work already in the public domain and release it as a copyrighted work. Think Alice in Wonderland, Shakespearian plays, or Memorias Pos-humas de Bras Cubas.

Therefore, we have elected to essentially dual license YARD. YARD code, regardless of where you got it, is public domain code. We have promised not to assert any copyright interest in the code. However, if that is not acceptable for whatever reason, YARD code is also licensed by us under the terms of the MIT license.

Submissions to the YARD project will not be accepted unless they are also released as public domain code.

Colophon

The YARD project is hosted on both Google Code and Sourceforge. General code releases are made through Sourceforge. The main discussion list is hosted on Google Groups. This Wiki is on Google's servers, and code releases are mirrored through Google.

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