Public domain material in d.org CVS?
I'd like to release a couple of themes through d.org. All my themes are built using Eric Meyer's browser reset stylesheet which is in the public domain. I'm also thinking about incorporating public domain images in my themes, such as photographs from the NASA archives. At the same time I'm aware of the restriction that only GPL'd files are allowed into the repository. What am I to do?
Groups:
Login to post comments
contacted Eric
I have contacted Eric and he fine with releasing his code as part of Drupal themes but won't/can't change the public domain status:
That's OK
The restriction is that everything that is put into CVS be released under the GPL. Public domain material by definition has no copyright restriction on it, so you can use it as part of any work under whatever license.
So you can release a theme on Drupal.org under the GPL. That some parts of it are based on a public domain work originally is not a problem; the copies downloaded from Drupal.org will be under the GPL, which is 100% legal and has no impact on the originals hosted on meyerweb.com. So you're a-ok.
It's probably polite to mention the source of the originals in code comments, but there is no requirement that you do so. Just don't mark it as anything other than GPL and let the packaging script add the LICENSE.txt file as normal and you'll be fine.