[zarzavat]

I know that US courts do some weird things sometimes but "The author disclaims copyright" is abundantly clear, and also the author has made plenty of public statements clarifying exactly how that is to be interpreted.

The situation in civil law countries and especially countries that have inalienable "author's rights" is much less clear and hostile even to the SQLite copyright release.

[not2b]

But even in those countries, it would seem that only the authors, the people with "author's rights", have a claim on anyone's use of the code. If they intend for people to use and copy the code without restriction there is no one else to say otherwise.

[josefx]

> If they intend for people to use and copy the code without restriction there is no one else to say otherwise.

At that point you rely on a statement that is not legally binding and could be changed at any time. Wouldn't be the first time a software dev. rage quit and decided to go scorched earth on his projects.