The bill exempts:

> a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software

which at least doesn't choose specific winners and losers among licenses. It does disfavor license-free and public domain software, which isn't great.

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MaxBarraclough a day ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, but of minimal practical impact. The Free and Open Source community has long discouraged releasing software into the public domain, as it has clear drawbacks compared to just using a permissive licence. The legal intricacies of the public domain vary between jurisdictions. Not all jurisdictions even allow copyrights to be surrendered in this way. [0]

Licence-free isn't a concern. That isn't even close to Free and Open source software, it's the opposite: software that you aren't permitted to acquire, use, modify, or distribute. [1][2]

[0] https://opensource.org/blog/public-domain-is-not-open-source

[1] https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/

[2] https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...

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greyface- 18 hours ago | parent [-]

This is exactly what GP was talking about: entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another. We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or public domain software anyway typically do it with full knowledge of such arguments.

	▲	MaxBarraclough 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another. Sure, that's true. The intent of the law is to give a special carve-out for, in essence, Free and Open Source software. It seems clear that it was deliberately written so as not to include proprietary freeware, say. > We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or public domain software anyway typically do it with full knowledge of such arguments. Like what? Really, it's very rare for code to be released into the public domain like this. I've never seen a compelling argument for doing so. If your intention is to make the code available to all, to do with as they wish, the legal reality is that the best way to achieve this is to release the software under a permissive licence, rather than releasing it to the public domain. If the exemption really doesn't cover public domain software, that presumably means that, as the copyrights on Free and Open Source software eventually expire and they enter the public domain, they will no longer be exempt. Again though this isn't of practical concern. edit Come to think of it, publicly available software developed by the US federal government is released into the public domain, right? There doesn't seem to be much software like this though. Direct link to the text of the bill: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1856/id/3456513

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pritambaral a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> It does disfavor license-free and public domain software, which isn't great.

Public domain software is free to "copy, redistribute, and modify", so ... where's the disfavour?

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tancop a day ago | parent | next [-]

Technically you could argue that public domain works don't have license terms that make them free so the exception can't apply. Only an ignorant or ultra literalist judge would see it that way but you never know.

On the other hand a public domain dedication is a binding term that gives you permission (or license) to do what you want...

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greyface- a day ago | parent | prev [-]

It only applies to software distributed under a license. Public domain software isn't distributed under a license. It's in the public domain; no license is needed.

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thorbutt a day ago | parent [-]

Can you name an OS that's licensed as public domain?

	▲	greyface- a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		https://www.pdos.org/ Public Domain Operating System
	▲	AlecMurphy a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		TempleOS