[Unlicense] RDF.rb public domain dedications

[Arto Bendiken]

Hello public-...@w3.org folks,

I've pushed out a 0.1.10 release of RDF.rb earlier today, and am now
looking to review, test and merge a number of patches and
contributions that several people (including Pius Uzamere and John
Fieber) have sent me recently via GitHub.

Before I merge these changes, however, I will need to collect public
domain dedications from the authors in question. This is an
unfortunate modern-day legal necessity for ensuring that RDF.rb's code
base, which is 100% in the public domain [1], continues to remain
completely free and unencumbered by any possible copyright claims or
any doubt regarding its legal situation.

So, if you are an aspiring contributor to RDF.rb, I would ask that you
kindly follow the simple & short instructions at [2] and e-mail me (or
much more preferably, this mailing list, so that it's a matter of
public record) a public domain dedication & copyright disclaimer for
the code you wish to contribute.

You can use the three-paragraph waiver at [3] as a template; you just
need to list the URLs that your contributions are for, so go ahead and
change that first line to reference [4] if your contributions are
intended for inclusion into RDF.rb, and add [5] if you've also
committed to a fork of RDF::Spec.

Note that you need to send in a copyright waiver once only, so that I
have it on file, after which I'll be happy to merge your subsequent
pull requests without any extra ado.

Also, I'll be following the FSF's rule of thumb [6] here, according to
which contributions totaling less than 15 lines of new code can safely
be considered "trivial" for legal purposes, in which case no waiver is
needed. Hence I've already previously merged e.g. a small patch [7]
from Pius, which fulfilled these criteria.

I already have a waiver from Ben Lavender, who is the largest
contributor to RDF.rb so far, but I will ask him to re-post it here on
the list as well so as to make it a part of the public record and also
provide an example of the process.

Thank you,
Arto

--
Arto Bendiken | @bendiken

PS. I've copied this message also to the Unlicense mailing list [8],
so in case you have any licensing/copyright-related questions that
have nothing to do with RDF and Ruby per se, please subscribe and
reply to the unli...@googlegroups.com mailing list instead of
public-...@w3.org.

[1] http://github.com/bendiken/rdf/blob/master/UNLICENSE
[2] http://unlicense.org/#unlicensing-contributions
[3] http://unlicense.org/WAIVER
[4] http://github.com/bendiken/rdf
[5] http://github.com/bendiken/rdf-spec
[6] http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant
[7] http://github.com/bendiken/rdf/commit/fd9a7881c256e42df3a3e6b59b236de2f816cbf7
[8] http://groups.google.com/group/unlicense

[Ben Lavender]

This is mine. I believe the signing is optional.

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Hash: SHA1


For Ben Lavender (blav...@gmail.com)
# Copyright waiver for <http://github.com/bendiken/rdf>
# Copyright waiver for <http://github.com/bendiken/rdf-spec>

I dedicate any and all copyright interest in this software to the
public domain. I make this dedication for the benefit of the public at
large and to the detriment of my heirs and successors. I intend this
dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all
present and future rights to this software under copyright law.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, my contributions are either
originally authored by me or are derived from prior works which I have
verified are also in the public domain and are not subject to claims
of copyright by other parties.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, no individual, business,
organization, government, or other entity has any copyright interest
in my contributions, and I affirm that I will not make contributions
that are otherwise encumbered.
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Ben