Are there any gotchas in contributing public domain code to an open source proje

Question

Are there any gotchas in contributing public domain code to an open source project? My understanding is that the existence of a copyright gives a project the right to enforce its license. And public domain code is, by definition, non-copyrighted.

What I'm specifically curious about: If an employee of the US government writes source code while on official duty and the federal agency releases it, that code is by law in the public domain. So, in particular, I'm wondering if there would be any issues if a federal agency/employee wants to contribute to an open source project.

Explanation / Answer

Not a problem. Look at any Linux distro and all the different licenses that go in the mix.

When a project adopts an identifiable piece of software:

The authors must be credited (even if not required).
The original license must be compatible with the enclosing license.
If requested by the authors, the original license (public domain) must remain.
Public domain is compatible with everything because, unlike licenses like the GPL, it is not viral. It says "do whatever you like with this", much like you can do with mathematics.

What one cannot not do is cover public domain works under a license, because they have no copyright, and thus no one with the right to bind users to any rules or contracts.

(I wrote more extensively about licenses a while back in case you're interested).

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