> Something in the public domain is not free? Copyright law is tricky. Under US law, "public domain" means "not copyrighted", the author waives all rights and

> Something in the public domain is not free? Copyright law is tricky. Under US law, "public domain" means "not copyrighted", the author waives all rights and the law allows them to release their works to the public domain. This you can consider free. In other jurisdictions, say The Netherlands, the "Auteurswet" does not have a way for you to release your source code into the public domain, making any such statement void. Other countries such as Germany do not allow the author to waive all rights ("Urheberrecht"), etc etc. Without knowing where the software was written, by whom the software was written and with whom it is shared, you cannot guarantee anything from "public domain" software.