does it mean if there is a project with no specific license type that it is automaticly "public domain"??

greetings from germany

Hi JMK

IANAL, but my understanding is that many jurisdictions do not have a legal concept of "public domain" with regard to copyright. In many countries copyright is automatic, and just because something is published does not mean the author has relinquished any rights.

OpenCores projects should all have licensing terms included (usually GPL, LGPL or BSD). Have you found one without?

ATB

Jeremy

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hello jeremy,

thank you for your answer. Before I posted the question I did some research on this topic, and my understandig of public domain is similar to yours.

In my case I'm doing a project where I have to implement an USB interface. So I am looking for a Communication Controller Core. There are 4 USB Cores online, but only one has a specific license (LGPL). The other 3 projects are just left blank under license. By browsing I found some other projects where there is no specifiaction about the license.

That is why I wondered: What type of license has a project if it isn't specified directly?

Greetings

Mark

I'd like to up this again. Anyone who has an idea or an opinion?

Hi Mark,

I suspect no one has an answer. In the absence of some very explicit rules stating that if you contribute code with no licence, it will be assumed to be with license "X", then I would imagine there is no license.

Some countries might interpret posting your material on a site dedicated to open source means you are implicitly giving a licence to use it, but I would not rely on that. In general publication does not imply a license for others to reuse.

Your only safe route is to contact the project author and ask them to make the license explicit.

And as always, remember IANAL!

Jeremy