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Comment by bmenrigh

2 days ago

I'm happy this is public domain. In 2023 I used the stain images as the basis for a CTF challenge (for BSidesSF). The encoded flag given to participants was https://github.com/BSidesSF/ctf-2023-release/blob/main/alien...

Unfortunately the challenge was a bit too hard and went unsolved during the competition.

It's hard to imagine a reason for it being kept... proprietary?

  • A lot of people want to slap licenses on things without really thinking about what the license will do (or prevent), in practice.

    I like the author's note about the license: "As we do not believe in imaginary property, this package belongs to the public domain."

    I think it's much more common to see a Creative Commons license on this sort of thing.

    • And even then, when people have good intentions they don't anyways know about edge cases. Please give things a licence in addition to placing it in public domain, because in some countries (like Australia) you can't release your rights that way.