Public-domain software

If a program is to be placed in the public domain, the author must explicitly disclaim the copyright and other rights on it in some way, e.g. by a waiver statement.

In the 1980s, a common way to share public-domain software[verification needed] was by receiving them through a local user group or a company like PC-SIG of Sunnyvale, California, which maintained a mail-order catalog of more than 300 disks with an average price of US$6.

Public-domain software was commercialized sometimes by a donationware model, asking the users for a financial donation to be sent by mail.

[13] Additionally, due to other changes in the computer industry, the sharing of source code became less common.

With the new act, software was by default copyright-protected and needed an explicit waiver statement or license from the author.

[14][15] Reference implementations of algorithms, often cryptographic meant or applied for standardization are still often released into the public domain; examples include CERN httpd[16] in 1993 and Serpent cipher in 1999.

With the 2000s and the emergence of peer-to-peer sharing networks and sharing in web development, a new copyright-critical generation of developers made the "license-free" public-domain software model visible again, also criticizing the FOSS license ecosystem ("Post Open Source") as stabilizing part of the copyright system.

[23][24][25][26] Around 2004, there was debate on whether public-domain software could be considered part of the FOSS ecosystem, as argued by lawyer Lawrence Rosen in the essay "Why the public domain isn't a license",[27] a position that faced opposition by Daniel J. Bernstein and others.

[28] In 2012, the status was finally resolved when Rosen changed his mind and accepted the CC0 as an open-source license, while admitting that, contrary to previous claims, copyright could be waived, as backed by a Ninth Circuit decision.

After 1988, all works were by default copyright protected and needed to be actively given into the public domain by a waiver statement.

On the other hand, magazines started in the mid-1980s to claim copyright even for type-in programs that were previously seen as PD.

[45][46] Only slowly did PD software authors start to include explicit relinquishment or license statement texts.

These examples of modern PD software (after the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988) are either under proper public domain (e.g. created by a US governmental organization), under a proper public domain like license (for instance CC0), or accompanied by a clear waiver statement from the author.