> being public domain was mentioned to me by Richard as a mistake they made that they've had to deal with This doesn't sound right. Did he explain to you why

> being public domain was mentioned to me by Richard as a mistake they made that they've had to deal with This doesn't sound right. Did he explain to you why he thinks he's stuck with it? He has the legal right to release SQLite other some other license and does so when companies pay him for it. Generally speaking, nothing about putting code in the public domain precludes collaborating with other developers. SQLite's caution against accepting contributions (even when the contributor is another American willing to sign over their contribution to the public domain) probably has more to do with Oracle being notoriously litigious and nasty. Not accepting contributions reduces the risk of one day being sued by Oracle, since it reduces the risk that Oracle IP might accidentally show up in SQLite. This would be a concern regardless of what sort of license SQLite used. If you're not worried about that sort of thing, there is nothing which prevents an American FOSS developer from accepting public domain contributions from other developers.